Do Not Go Gentle
by Alleyprowler
Summary: In AC 208, it is discovered that the Alliance experimented with more than mobile dolls and machines of war.
1. Chapter 1

Quatre woke reluctantly. It was that neon-lit nothing o'clock that might have been anywhere between an hour after sunset or an hour before dawn. He was not in his own bed, nor was he lying on a nondescript hotel mattress, and he experienced a moment of profound disorientation bordering on vertigo before his memory kicked in and supplied him with the necessary data.

Earth. This was Earth. New Roma. It had to be New Roma, because this low, wide bed smelled faintly of Trowa, and Trowa's apartment was where he stayed whenever he was even remotely nearby.

Not that Trowa was there, of course, he realized with both relief and regret. Trowa was away, maybe in London, or Prague, or Eden III, anywhere where people wanted the type of flash-bang, edge-of-the-seat entertainment he and his troupe provided. It didn't matter exactly where. Just away somewhere where the rich and bored went to seek vicarious thrills.

Quatre sat up, feeling the familiar weary ache of jetlag pulling at his muscles, and groped for his watch on the bedside table. It was half past four. He could probably curl up and sleep for another two hours, at least, but he was afraid that if he went back to sleep he would go on sleeping until long after his meeting at eight, and that wouldn't do.

Outside the warmth of the comforter the world was as chilly as it was dark, and Quatre pulled his discarded jacket on over his bare shoulders. It reeked of travel and of oniony nervous sweat. No matter; he would have time to wash both it and himself before his meeting.

Some coffee was in order. He made his way to the kitchen, which was all dark granite and oak. When the light was switched on, the important appliances and surfaces were spotlighted with high-intensity halogens in tin cones while the rest of it in shadows. It looked oddly like a stage. Or maybe not so oddly, considering Trowa's trade. Presentation and misdirection were his most marketable talents.

Quatre stepped inside the miniature arena and blinked at the monstrous espresso machine on one of the countertops. He poked listlessly at a few of its buttons, and then gave up. Instant would be good enough for the time being.

Mug in hand, Quatre padded to the living room and sat down in one of the leather club chairs near the television. "News," he said.

Nothing happened.

He coughed, cleared his throat, and said, "News" again in a louder voice.

The television screen remained a black, lifeless lens in the corner.

"Crap," he said, getting up, and then "Ow!" as he barked his shin against the edge of a low coffee table. He said several more things as he rubbed the sore spot, but the words faded away when he noticed that there was a large manila envelope in the center of the table. In the faint night light from the window, he could just make out some writing on it.

"Lights," he said, and a pair of floor lamps obediently lit the immediate area. He picked up the envelope.

WELCOME, QUATRE

Trowa's spiky, uneven handwriting was as familiar and comforting as a favorite coat. Quatre wanted to smile, but he kept his face carefully neutral instead. Under the message was a whimsical doodle of a clown's half-mask with wide, grinning lips and a star for an eye. Look out, danger, secrets. That was what the drawing meant.

Quatre felt a chill run down his spine. He unfastened the metal clasp on the envelope and sat back in the chair, letting the contents spill into his lap. There was a socket drive-- small yet heavy--a few photocopied news articles, several photographs, and a slip of paper with more handwriting on it. Quatre picked the last one up first.

_Dear Quatre, _it read_, thank you for looking after the place. Hope to see you in person soon. Sorry about the TV, but it watches us more than we watch it. These days popular media is only entertainment and you'd be better off getting your news from the source. I'll call you later. Much love, T._

Quatre forgot himself long enough to smile at that, but his chuckle was quickly replaced by a sharp, surprised shout as the note burst into flames in his fingers.

Startled, he sprang to his feet and started to brush the flames away from his face and clothing before he realized that the fire was already gone, leaving only a dusting of grey ash on his pajama pants. Flash paper. He put an hand to his chest in an effort to reign in his racing heart.

"Trowa, you complete and utter bastard," he said, and began to laugh.

* * *

Quatre tucked the documents back into the envelope and headed for the shower. He was still feeling too tired and off-kilter to give proper attention to them, which, after only a cursory glance, had proven too unsettling to read when his attention wasn't at its best.

He took a shower first, attempting to scrub off the travel weariness with soap and water, then, when that didn't work, resorted to a second cup of instant coffee. That made him feel a little better, a little more present. He booted up his notebook while he dried himself and checked the availability status of the Maguanac.

Rashid still had not changed his away message: _I am a new father. If you wish to congratulate me, I have no use for cards or wine; instead, send me more hours in the day_.

Quatre grinned at that. He saw that Auda and Abdul were online, available and no doubt bombarding their fearless leader with 'advice'. Going down the list, he saw that most of his team had checked in at least once during the past six hours. Only two hadn't; they were probably still in transit or taking advantage of some peace and quiet before the eight o'clock meeting. Quatre typed in a quick greeting and then went back to reading the news. Or what passed for the news, anyway, which, when he looked at it with a more critical eye, wasn't very enlightening at all. The columns seemed to be filled with sports updates, celebrity hijinks and the kind of maudlin human interest stories that were supposed to make one feel sentimental and inclined to give to charity. Even the weather report seemed to have been dumbed down to mere icons of anthropomorphic rain clouds and smiling suns.

Trowa's voice seemed to whisper in his ear:_ You'd be better off getting your news from the source._

Quatre looked at the envelope on the table with a strange feeling of lucid paranoia. He could not take it with him to the meeting, that much was certain, but he also could not simply leave it lying around.

Instead, he took it to the bedroom and opened up Trowa's wardrobe. He pulled one of the drawers all the way out and removed the folded stacks of cotton shirts from inside, setting them neatly on the made-up bed. He noticed that they were all solid, somber colors--outside his performance outfits, Trowa had never been an adventurous dresser.

He turned the drawer upside down and, using strips from a roll of black electrical tape, secured the envelope to the bare wood. The envelope was just thin enough that the drawer slid back into its slot with little resistance. He put everything back where it belonged and then, in a move that made him feel a little embarrassed and a little more secure at the same time, spit-pasted a hair from his own head over the crack between the wardrobe doors. It blended invisibly against the white pine.

Satisfied for the time being, he changed into his work clothes, grabbed his jacket from the laundry room, and set out for his meeting.

Once outdoors, he was struck by another wave of that strange, exhausting feeling of being outside his element. There was a metallic taint of hydrocarbons in the air and it was humid, giving him the sense that there wasn't quite enough oxygen. The light was different, too, glaring into his eyes from the eastern horizon rather than a diffuse glow from a colony ceiling. It was going to be a warm day.

There was a hyperrail station a short walk from Trowa's building that would take him to the job site. Quatre fought his way though crowds of immaculately dressed adults and schoolbound children, all of whom seemed to be talking into cell phones, datapads, and each other's ears at top volume. The noise and push and sheer volume of humanity made the muscles in his neck and shoulders start to knot with tension.

The railcar was standing room only, and Quatre tried to shrink in on himself as strangers pressed intimately close to him. None of them seemed in the least bit concerned or uncomfortable with this; they seemed to have developed the knack of internalizing their sense of personal space and could carry on working, chatting, or simply daydreaming without any apparent regard to their neighbors. Quatre had to wonder how any of them could even hear themselves think.

By the time Quatre managed to wrestle his way off the platform of the Plaza of Poets, he thought he might not have bothered with is nap, his shower, and Trowa's coffee. He was wrung out yet frazzled, every nerve on edge, and he felt grimy, his clothes and exposed skin impregnated with a thousand alien scents from a thousand alien people, aliens who were now streaming past him, individuals seeming to melt into a solid biomass that parted around him like a river around a rock.

He cast around desperately for a landmark, a sign, anything that would give him a sense of where he was. It was a plaza, as per the station name, and he supposed the glimpses of stone statues he could see above the crowd were of poets, but other than that there were only rushing bodies and a bustling sense of purpose that seemed to be at right angles to his own.

His phone began to vibrate in his pocket. Like a dash of cold water, it brought him back to his senses.

"Yes, hello!" he shouted into it, sticking his index finger into his free ear to block out some of the noise.

"Good morning, Quatre." Ahmad's voice was like an anchor. "It is my sad duty as your supervisor to inform you that you are over fifteen minutes late for the meeting and I am going to have to put this incident on your permanent record."

Startled, Quatre checked his watch. It wasn't quite eight o'clock. "Very funny, Ahmad."

"I thought so. And, since you are usually compulsively early, I assume that you're lost. Where are you now?"

"I'm not lost! I'm in the Plaza of Poets, near the hyperrail station." The building was here...somewhere.

"The last train came in five minutes ago, yet you still aren't here having a hot cup of coffee and a fresh pastry with me while we go over our meeting plans. I wonder why that is?"

That was deliberate torture. Quatre hadn't eaten since the shuttle's meal service sixteen hours previously. He was ravenous. "Have you looked out a window lately? It's mayhem out here!"

"If I could see beyond the scaffolding and plastic sheeting currently blocking off the view, I might possibly agree. However, since I have been here since before dawn and the windows are covered--"

Quatre suddenly saw it. It was to the north, a squat building that might have been anything under its steel and plastic exoskeleton. Since it was the only building in the plaza that was obviously under construction, Quatre felt a little foolish for overlooking it. "I'll be there in five minutes."

* * *

Quatre opened the door of what had once been the school office and the last lingering shreds of fear and distress immediately disappeared when he saw the familiar faces, the welcoming smiles, heard the rumble of voices and smelled the scents of coffee and fresh pastries.

"Quatre, you're late!"

Quatre met the good-tempered barb with a smile. "I got held up, Auda. Sorry."

"No problem. You're here now, right?"

"Right. Am I the last?"

"Yes, but we saved you some breakfast anyway. Come on in!"

Quatre made his way through the rather crowded room, his progress impeded by greetings and jokes, and ended up at a secretary's desk that had been co-opted as a buffet. He helped himself to a cup of coffee and an apple pastry and found a clear spot on another desk to sit down on. "Where is Ahmad?" he asked.

"In there, with the head architect." Auda pointed toward a door with a frosted glass window cut into the top half; Quatre could see vaguely human shadows moving beyond it.

"Is there a problem?"

"Isn't there always?"

That was certainly true. "What is it this time?"

"Apparently the water mains under this building are older than dirt and the city is refusing to issue a permit until we agree to do something about them."

"'Do something'? Like what?"

Auda gave a great shrug. "Convince them that it's not our problem?"

Quatre swallowed the last of his pastry with the dregs of his coffee. "You would think that would be obvious. So why is Ahmad talking to the architect and not the city administrators?"

"He thinks that if he can figure out a way to 'do something', he can net a few more contracts here."

"Oh my..." Quatre began to rub the bridge of his nose.

"Ahmad is the only person I know who is more of a go-getter than you are, kid."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"More coffee?"

"Sure."

Forty-five minutes later, Ahmad and the architect stepped out of their office, both of them looking a little tired, but smiling. "Do I see sleeping on the job?" Ahmad asked rhetorically, tipping back the chair of a snoozing Maguanac.

"We're on the job?" asked Mumar, one of the younger engineers on the team.

"But of course! Did you doubt my ability to reach a profitable compromise with the city bureaucracy?"

"Er..."

"We can do it. On time, under budget, and with a ten-percent bonus, gentlemen."

Quatre's laughter was drowned out in the general cheer that rose at that pronouncement and he was nearly knocked off his feet when an enthusiastic hand whapped him on the back. Ahmad was the hero of the hour.

There is nothing like the busy, happy rush of a new project to make time fly, and it was nearly dark when Quatre next had a chance to take a break.

He sat down cross-legged on the wooden floor of the scaffolding on the fifth floor and snapped the top off a bottle of cold water. It felt wonderful going down his dusty throat. A fresh breeze had sprung up and he lifted his chin, letting it dry the sweat on his face and neck. It had been a good day. He would sleep well tonight.

A set of heavy-booted footsteps sounded from behind him, but Quatre was too pleasantly tired to turn around to see who it was. "Hey, it was a good day, wasn't it?" he said.

"You must be hungry."

Quatre didn't exactly leap to his feet at the sound of that voice, but he did rise to one knee and twist himself around. "Rashid!"

As befitted a new father, Rashid looked both joyous and exhausted. His beard had a few more strands of silver in it and he seemed to have lost weight, but he was smiling--no, grinning. "I'm almost offended that you haven't rung me in the middle of the night to give me advice about my new daughter," he said, and held up a great hand when Quatre began to protest. "Almost."

"I figured you would need some quiet time to bond with Maryam and Fatin."

"Maryam is, unfortunately, not very interested in 'bonding' with me these days. It was a difficult labor."

Quatre hoped the sunset covered up his blush. "She and Fatin are doing well, I hope?"

"Oh, yes. I have pictures, if you would like to see," Rashid said, producing a small camera from the folds of his shirt.

Quatre spent a few minutes looking at poorly-lit shots of an exhausted-looking woman holding what appeared to be a small, red, irate wad of dough. "Very cute," he said neutrally, handing the camera back to Rashid.

"No, not really," Rashid said with a smile. "Neither of them were at their best that morning." He stared at the camera for a few moments before shutting it off. Without the ambient glow, the evening seemed very dark. "So," he said smiling once again, "I asked if you were hungry in hope that you would say yes and that we could have a conversation that did not revolve around newborn babies, their needs and their byproducts. I brought some food."

Quatre was hungry, now that he thought about it, but he also wanted to get back to the apartment. He had successfully tried to stop thinking about the envelope for the entire day, but now he was full of a low-key anxiety about it, and he considered Rashid to be one of the few people he could share it with.

Besides, he was reasonably certain that Trowa's apartment was secure. Reasonably.

Trowa's voice sounded in his ear:_ It watches us more than we watch it._

"Rashid, I'd be more than happy to eat with you, but I'd like to go back to the place where I'm staying. I have some things I would like to show you."

Rashid stood up, once again the tall, solemn totem of Quatre's youth. "Of course, Quatre. Lead the way."

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Quatre could not dissuade Rashid from taking Trowa's television apart. Truth be told, he hadn't put up much of an argument; the concern that etched wrinkles in the Maguanac's forehead when he had learned of Trowa's suspicions was enough to let him know that arguing would be a waste of breath. He understood why it needed to be done, but he couldn't bear to actually take part in destroying Trowa's property; instead, Quatre poured himself a glass of wine, sat on the sofa and tried not to cringe every time a part came free from the set.

"I suppose you've done this before..." he asked feebly.

"No, not really."

"Oh." Quatre put his hand over his eyes as Rashid extracted a length of ribbon cable from the back of the LED screen. His hand stayed there for the next few minutes before Rashid announced that it was a perfectly ordinary television and there didn't seem to be anything suspicious about it.

However: "It seems that Trowa--or someone--has taken it apart before. It looks like something is missing here." Rashid pointed with the tip of his screwdriver.

Quatre looked at the small, empty hemisphere molded into the bottom of the casing. It was just about the right size and shape to hold a miniature omnidirectional microphone. "The television doesn't respond to voice commands. He must have removed the mic."

"That seems like a good possibility, considering Trowa's concerns about surveillance." He lifted the repaired set and placed it back where it belonged. "You had something to show me?"

"Yes, just a moment." Quatre rose and went to the bedroom to retrieve the envelope, relieved to see that the hair he had pasted over the drawer was still in place. He brought it back to the living room, where Rashid was occupied with placing containers of food out on the coffee table. Once Quatre saw the spread, he forgot all about the envelope and his stomach made a very loud, very embarrassing noise at being neglected for so long.

Rashid gave him an amused look. "Have you missed my cooking that much?"

"If that's your lentil stew, then yes. Yes I have."

"Then eat." Rashid held a bowl of stew out to Quatre with one hand while reaching for the envelope with the other. Quatre made the trade gladly.

"There was a note," Quatre said once the edge had been taken off of his hunger, "but it was written on flash paper and it burned up. It said something about not trusting the media and going to the source instead. I presume that's the source he meant."

Rashid, who was studying the photographs, nodded. "Some of these are more than thirty years old, according to the date stamps. Most are more recent." He picked up one of the photos and frowned at it. "And quite odd."

"Odd how?"

"Look at this." Rashid handed him one of the photographs.

From the date stamp Quatre could see that it had been shot in June of AC 171. It showed a green field with a number of rather handsome brown and white cows roaming in it, cropping the lush grass. In the middle distance was a low hill with a broad chestnut tree casting an inviting pool of shade on the sun-drenched landscape. In the background, snow-capped mountains defined a blue skyline. It was pretty, in a dull, prosaic sort of way.

"And now, look at this."

The second picture had been taken in AC 205, only three years ago. It was only by comparing the views of the distant mountains that Quatre could tell it was taken from the same perspective as the first photo. The cows and the tree were gone. The grass had given way to tall weeds. A three-story redbrick building dominated the shot, but it had obviously been abandoned for some time. The windows that hadn't been broken were boarded up, and the crumbling driveway was home to more weeds. On the edges of the photo, Quatre could see corners of other buildings, wooden ones with peeling paint and mossy roofs.

He wasn't hungry anymore. "It's a military base," he said, handing the photos back. "It was obviously abandoned after the war. I wonder why Trowa wanted me to see that?"

"The other photos seem to have been taken at roughly the same location," Rashid said. "Different views at different times with different subjects, but at the same location." Rashid handed him one of the news clippings, and Quatre noted the name of a town in the byline.

"Ste-Cecelia. I've never heard of it."

"Perhaps it doesn't exist anymore. Even before the fall of Sanc, the separationist factions had developed a habit of swallowing entire villages whole. For the good of the people, of course."

Quatre was sorry to hear the bitterness in Rashid's voice, but not entirely surprised. "Maybe the town is still there, only under a different name. Even if it isn't, there's got to be something there, something that Trowa felt was worth investigating."

Rashid didn't appear to be listening to him. He was peering intently at a bundle of newsclippings. "Yes," he said in a slow, distracted voice. "Enough that he took the time to do extensive background research. Here, look at these." He handed part of the bundle to Quatre while he continued to read the rest.

Quatre felt an odd sensation of dread settle in the pit of his stomach as he skimmed a condensed history of the region.

Beginning in AC 179, as far as he was able to determine, this lovely, quiet, pastoral community had been slowly taken over by the military, most likely by an early incarnation of the Alliance. That in itself was not so unusual. The Alliance had established hundreds, if not thousands of small installations all over the earth early on in its career, which was why it was able to slowly and gradually become accepted as a normal part of life for most of the population. This included the village of Ste-Cecelia.

The installation was, indeed, welcomed at first. It brought a moderate economic and cultural boom to the region, and relations between the newcomers and the natives were friendly. Several of the earlier articles mentioned mutual celebrations and generous donations from the military to local schools and libraries.

Statements from the spokespeople emphasized the installation's purpose as a primarily scientific operation, dedicated to increasing the region's already rich agricultural resources. Several local farmers were made moderately wealthy by selling their cattle, sheep and goats to researchers on the base. What the researchers actually did with the animals was unclear.

When he came to the end of the printed articles, Quatre reached for the socket drive. He plugged one end into his laptop and then slid the earpiece over his left ear and flipped the mini-screen over his left eye. He pressed the commands to let the sounds and images play over the laptop's monitor so Rashid could listen as he read.

The news reports were heavily censored, obviously lifted from government archives, but they told roughly the same tale. A modestly prosperous village had become the focus of a military research group calling itself Project 119. Their goals were stated in disturbingly vague terms: to develop methods to help prevent and arrest the ill effects of outer space exposure on the human body, and perhaps in the process to help eradicate certain diseases--which diseases and the exact nature of the research had been censored out.

The last clip, taken in AC 196, was a brief piece about the official disbanding and withdrawal of the project. The audio cut out before any details could be given, but the last few seconds of video were most disturbing.

A satellite map zoomed in on a region south of Sanc, where a local camera picked up and displayed a paddock full of sheep. Most were dead. Those that weren't were pacing restlessly around the perimeter, treading carelessly on the bodies of the dead ones and bleating. When one live one passed another, they bared their teeth and snapped, sometimes engaging in a minor tussle before going their separate ways.

Quatre was wondering what the hell that was all about before a dark, indistinct shape flew toward the camera lens and made the visuals go black with a sudden violence that made him push himself back and throw himself into a defensive posture. "What was that?" he asked, tearing off the headset.

Rashid, looking disturbed, simply closed the lid of the laptop and shook his head. "I don't know, but you're about to go running off by yourself again, aren't you?"

"Rashid, something went wrong there. Something might still be going on." He raised his eyes from the tangle of electronics in his lap and was met by an understanding look. "I have a very bad feeling about this."

Rashid smiled sadly. "I know I can't stop you from going, but do me a favor before you go. Work in the basement tomorrow morning. You may suffer an accident."

"What are you talking about?"

"In the course of rendering you first aid, I will have to bandage your ankle."

Quatre nodded, suddenly understanding. "Of course, Rashid." He leaned forward to embrace his friend and was swept up an a mighty bear hug that plainly conveyed Rashid's love and his fear...and his trust. "Thank you."

"You've always come back before. Please try not to break your track record," Rashid said at last, standing up. "Now, on to our second course. Do you still like cucumber salad?"

#

The accident went off fairly well, Quatre thought. He had cried out in the manner appropriate for one whose leg was trapped under a pile of rebar, the straps that had been holding them against the wall having been artfully scissored by a 'rat'. The packet of fake blood he had pilfered from Trowa's workroom added a nice touch when spattered on his lower leg.

Rashid was first on the scene, of course, and had body-checked the others out of the way while he examined Quatre's ankle. The crowning touch came when Quatre hissed in real pain while the tracking chip was inserted under his skin.

"What are you looking at?" Rashid had bellowed at the others when he was finished. "It's just a broken ankle. Get back to work!"

The Maguanac standing nearby, braced by their leader's voice, had stood aside as Rashid carried Quatre out of the building and into the rush-hour crowd in the Poet's Square, where Quatre had been finally been able to run free.

#

Trowa called that afternoon just as Quatre had finished changing his clothes and was beginning to pack up his travel bag. "Hi there. I hope it's not too late for a chat," he said. He seemed calm and was even smiling a little, but Quatre could see the tension around his eyes and mouth. He could also see quite a few people milling around in the background; some in coveralls, some in street clothes, some in fantastic costumes, and some in nothing at all. Trowa was obviously letting him know that it was the middle of a dress rehearsal and that the possibility of eavesdropping was not out of the question.

"No, not at all. How are you?" Quatre sat down on the sofa in front of his laptop and tilted the screen to give Trowa a view of the living room, complete with the dead eye of the television.

"I'm doing well." Trowa's effortful smile slipped as he eyed the background in his own screen. "Did you find the present I left you?"

And now, the dance. "Yes, it's very intriguing. How did you find it?"

"One of my aerialists brought it to my attention. She had family in the area."

The past tense did not go unnoticed. "I see." Quatre didn't bother to keep all of his trepidation out of his voice.

"I was calling to let you know that I was planning on coming back next weekend. I'd really like to see you--" that part, at least, sounded sincere, "--but I understand if you have other plans."

"I'm afraid I do. I have some business to take care of up north. I hope to be back soon, though; I've really missed you."

The smile was back, and this time it didn't look like it hurt to wear. "I've missed you, too. Know who else misses you?"

"No, who?"

"Wing. I think you should call him."

Dear Trowa. He was subtle as a brick sometimes. "Yeah, it would be good to talk to him. I'll try to get in touch with him tomorrow."

"Good. I should go, it's getting late."

"Good night, then. I hope to see you soon."

"Same here." Trowa looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. "By the way, you have soup on your collar."

"What? I--" Quatre pulled out the collar of his shirt, attempting to find the stain, but before he could protest that he wasn't that barbaric, Trowa rang off, laughing.

#

Borders shifted and even geography changed, but getting directions remained the same. Quatre rented a nondescript dark blue sedan with no problem, obtained maps and a GPS and was even given a credit chip good for discounts on for goods and services, but none of that prepared him for the difficulty he encountered when he attempted to find Ste-Cecelia. The name was no longer on any modern maps, and no matter where he stopped and asked, no one could give him any better clues than "It's up north somewhere".

So, he drove north. For two days he zigzagged across the countryside, stopping at every town, village and hamlet he came across to try and get his bearings. He attempted to contact Trowa, but Trowa was notoriously difficult to get hold of at the end of the season and Quatre doubted he would be able help anyway. It would have been nice to hear his voice, though.

Rashid was slightly more informative. He had found some older maps and was able to tell Quatre which roads led there. Unfortunately, those roads did not actually seem to exist anymore. Had Quatre not been so tired and frustrated he might have wondered about that, but when he stopped for good on the evening of the third day, all he wanted in the world was a hot shower and a soft bed.

Quatre checked himself into the only hotel in town, and it was only force of habit that made him ask the girl stationed at the desk if she knew where the town of Ste-Cecelia might be.

"Ste-Cecelia? My, I haven't heard that name in a very long time," she said, pausing in the act of filling out Quatre's registration card. She was a pale, insubstantial girl with lank hair tucked under a flowered kerchief and a vague, distracted air about her. Quatre, who feeling less than charitable at the moment, wondered if she was a bit mentally challenged.

"So you have heard of it. Do you know if it's around here?"

She gave him a vague smile. "That's what this town was called before the soldiers came." She slid the registration card toward him. "You have to sign here, please."

"This is Ste-Cecelia?" Quatre blurted out, hardly daring to believe his luck. He had only stopped because he could not drive any further without sleep, and he hadn't realized he had actually reached his destination.

She nodded. "The soldiers changed the name a long time ago. It's called Fort Lorraine now."

Quatre slid the signed registration card back to her. "Why don't you just change the name back?"

"Oh, the soldiers didn't call it Fort Lorraine. We did. They called us Project 119, but that wasn't a very good name for a town." She spent a long time comparing the signature on the card against the signature on his passport.

"What was Project 119?" Quatre asked once she finally returned his identification.

"Something that happened before the war." A furrow creased her brow momentarily before she brightened again. "It was so much fun at first. We had lots of parades and there were men and women in beautiful uniforms, and they even built another little village over there," she pointed toward the arched fireplace in the lobby. Quatre was willing to bet that the crumbling base lay in that direction.

"Did your parents tell you all this?" he asked the girl, who could not have been older than twenty, and most likely a year or two younger than that. But then, he was tired and he might have been letting her childlike mannerisms affect his judgment. Or so he told himself later.

"No, I saw it all myself. I have a picture book somewhere." She started to wander off.

"No! Wait, miss..."

"Sophie," she said, turning back.

"Sophie. I'm Quatre. Will you be here tomorrow? I'd love to talk to you about the town, and I'd like to see your pictures."

She blushed suddenly. It made her look almost pretty. "I'd like that, Quatre."

"Good. I'll ask for you tomorrow morning, but right now I'd like to sleep. Good night."

"Till tomorrow, Quatre!"

He waved at her over his shoulder while taking the stairs two at a time. He had never wanted to contact Heero so badly in his life.


	3. Chapter 3

The supply van trundled away from the curb, leaving behind a lone passenger on the Rue de Colombe. It wasn't quite dawn and the city was shrouded in dirty fog that made it difficult to see, but Quatre watched anyway as the figure paused to take in his surroundings before bearing south toward a newsagent who was just beginning to set up his kiosk for the day.

The passenger purchased a map and a newspaper, then walked a few paces down the street before slipping into a narrow alley between a warehouse and an office suite. Quatre almost missed this move, as it was executed with a smooth casualness that was meant to attract no attention--not that there was much attention to attract this early in the morning on this particular street. Aside from the newsagent and a couple of vagrants sleeping it off in doorways, the street was deserted.

At the Hôtel de Rossaline, which had once held a quaint charm and was now, like most of the district, falling into seedy disrepair, Quatre stepped away from the window. There would be at least an hour before the disappearing passenger would reveal himself again, and it would be no use looking out for him before then.

That left some time to think, and to plan. Quatre, wishing to make the most of that time, picked up the courtesy phone and dialed the front desk. "Hello, this is room 419. Yes, good morning. Could you send up some coffee and breakfast for two? Thank you. I'm expecting a guest."

##

The first thing Heero did when he entered Room 419 was to go stand in front of the fireplace. His shoulders and jaw were tense, as if he was repressing a shiver. He probably was.

Quatre poured a cup of hot coffee into a large earthenware mug and added a splash of milk. "Here, drink this. It'll warm you up."

Heero wrapped his fingers around the mug and inhaled some steam. "It's cold here," he said.

"I know what you mean." Quatre moved back to the window and placed his palm against the glass. A few more people had taken to the streets: A pair of dispirited office workers, a street sweeper, an elderly man smoking on a doorstep. A suspicious-looking gendarme clopped by on a old mare, poking a homeless man sheltering in the doorways with a long wooden stick. Get up, move along. But to where? Quatre wondered. There was nowhere to go. "I'm told that it wasn't always like this."

Heero, apparently warmed by the fire and the coffee, took a seat at the small, round table by the window. "Lots of places never really prospered after the wars."

That was true, but Quatre was quite certain Heero didn't believe that was the case here. Fort Lorraine had an air of despair about it that had nothing to do with a simple economic slump. "Heero, how did you come into town?"

"Private jetport up north, then the commuter train, then the bus, then I caught a ride with a supply truck. I had to hike quite bit." Heero's voice held a faintly peeved note that he should have had to take such an indirect route.

"Did you notice anything on the way in?"

"Winter seems to come early in this part of the world."

Quatre nodded. "And did you notice anything about the surrounding countryside?"

"I'm not familiar enough with the area to make a judgment on that," Heero said, obviously wondering where this line of conversation was going.

"We're in the heart of farm country. This region used to be famous for its wine, dairy and fruit. The surrounding towns are wealthy with tourist money, yet this place, well," he made a gesture toward the smogged window that was more eloquent than any words would have been. "It's practically a ghost town, and no one seems to know exactly why."

"Very mysterious," Heero said dryly. "What has this got to do with me, though?"

Quatre held out the envelope Trowa had left behind for him. He had gone over the contents himself so many times that he could have neatly summarized the entire problem in a matter of minutes, but he felt that Heero deserved to see the data first hand.

Heero shot him a suspicious look over the rim of his coffee mug as he skimmed the documents. A scant few minutes later, he set them down and stared across the table. "What made you think I'd be interested in all this?"

"Trowa though you might find it intriguing. So did I."

"In what role? Do you need me as a security consultant? That's what I'm doing now, you know. Four hundred credits per day plus expenses."

Quatre sat himself down in the chair across from Heero with a disappointed grunt. He had expected something like that to come up.

Since the end of the wars, Heero had been wandering. First he had tied himself to Relena as her head of security, and then, when she had no longer needed him, he drifted from job to job, never quite fitting in one way or another. He was too much of a rogue for a corporate environment and too dependent on an outside structure to work for himself, so he tended to lurk around the not-entirely-legal fringes and took what he could get. Quatre wasn't really comfortable knowing what that work entailed, so he had never asked too many questions, but, whatever Heero had been doing, it had turned him into an isolated and secretive creature.

It seemed that Heero wasn't so much unwilling to settle as unable to. Quatre had tried to talk him into working with the Maguanac at one point, but Heero had declined. Quatre knew he had also refused offers of work from Trowa and Duo, except on an ad hoc basis, and he had also refused a plum offer from the Preventers, choreographed by Wufei. Quatre didn't know what all of that rejection meant, he only knew that he didn't want Heero to slip through his fingers this time.

"Heero," Quatre said, quietly and calmly as he could, "I don't need you as a security consultant. Or as a bodyguard, a hacker, a pilot or anything else with a title attached to it. I need _you_. "

Heero didn't say anything, but he took another drink of his coffee. He was still listening, though, and he hadn't attempted to either leave or throw a punch. That was encouraging.

"You're the best person for the job," Quatre continued, picking up his own coffee cup. "I trust your judgment and your resourcefulness. I also know you can help me find things out and watch my back and stay under the radar while you do it."

"If you're trying to flatter me into working for you, you can save your breath. I'll need four hundred a day plus expenses."

Quatre did a few swift mental calculations of his personal resources, then shook his head. "I can give you two hundred a day including room and board. I can't access company funds in this matter. Not without further justification, anyway."

Heero set the envelope down on the table and gave Quatre a flat stare. "If you can't afford me, what makes you think I'll work for you?"

"Because when I asked you for help, you came."

Heero stared at him. Quatre stared back. He had nothing left to offer, nothing left to say. He simply sat back and watched as Heero thought it over, observing the emotions that Heero himself probably didn't know were playing over his tired face.

After what seemed like ages, Heero picked up the envelope and opened the fastenings. "I'll check it out"

Quatre stood. "Good. I'll leave you alone, then. You can give me your answer when you're ready."

##

Unwilling to sit idly in the lobby of the hotel, Quatre borrowed an umbrella from the stand near the front doors and ventured outside. It was raining again. Quatre wondered briefly if it always rained in Fort Lorraine, but then he remembered that he was on Earth and as just it was not always sunny and warm in New Roma, it was probably not always raining in Fort Lorraine. Earth weather had its own seasons and tempers, and the rains would pass in time.

Still, it made him uneasy. He tried to stroll casually around the square, but the haze and the noise of the rain threatened to drive him to distraction, so he dashed across the square to the only other building that showed signs of life. To his surprise, it was a library.

Puffing and dashing drops of rainwater out of his hair, Quatre crossed the lobby and stared in awe at the tall stacks of books that seemed to bow inward to a three-story atrium overhead. Raindrops fell vertically against the dirty glass dome at the apex, and he had to look down quickly to the marble floor before he was overcome with vertigo. A deep breath later, he was almost intoxicated by the rich scent of leather, old paper and floor polish, and he had to wonder when was the last time he had been in a real library. He inhaled again, trying to catch a faint memory, but there was some foul and rotten undertone that made him hold his breath; at the same time, an elderly person of indeterminate sex rolled up to him in an ancient wheelchair. "The charity house is on the south side if the square."

"What? Oh." Quatre pushed the hood of his jacket back. "No, I'm not looking for charity. I'm a visitor."

The librarian, so Quatre assumed, looked up at him from a nest of shawls and rugs. "We rarely get visitors here."

"I was passing through, but my car broke down, you see," he said, and gave the sad, helpless shrug of the stranded traveller. "So I'm here for a few days. I thought I'd take the opportunity to learn a little bit about the area."

The librarian's bright blue eyes crinkled in what might have been either suspicion or amusement. "Isn't that a thing," he said in a low voice, as if talking to himself. "A stranger is curious about our little town."

"I don't mean to pry, I'm just passing the time," Quatre said.

"Hm. Well. He doesn't mean to pry." The librarian chuckled wheezily and rolled his chair back. One gnarled old hand lifted and pointed toward the stairs that curved in an elegant swoop around the far side of the atrium. "One floor up, to your left. You might find a book or two to your liking."

"Thank you," Quatre said, but the librarian had already rolled away, leaving only faint damp tracks on the marble floor.

##

Quatre took his notebook out of his bag, set it down in an empty carrel, then clipped his satellite phone to the communications port. He had skimmed several books in the local history section of the library and had come up with nothing of interest except for a few local maps. He scanned those into Rashid's private messenger along with a note letting him know that everything was okay, then clicked into Trowa's phone. "Hi, I know you're probably not there, but--"

He was startled into silence as the connection picked up. Trowa's voice came over his earpiece as static appeared on the screen. "Hello there. What made you assume I wasn't going to be here?"

"You're always busy."

"So are you. Yet we always seem to make time for each other. Hold on, let me get this thing working..."

The screen stabilized, fuzzed out, and then went back into real time. Trowa was there, calm and smiling. He appeared to be sitting at an outdoor cafe, but Quatre could make out the hustle and noise of the circus setting up in the background. There was a cup of coffee in front of him.

"Am I interrupting something?" Quatre asked.

"No, not really. We're opening up a little bistro as a side attraction, and this is a dry run. The espresso is very good," he said, taking a sip from the tiny ceramic cup. His eyes darted to one side in a small display of nerves before focusing back on the camera. "How is your work going?

Quatre didn't know whether to take that question at face value or not. "I'm still doing research."

"You've always been good at that." Trowa licked some imaginary foam from the corner of his mouth. Quatre chose to ignore the gesture. Now was not the time.

"Thanks, but I'm still in the processing stage. I'm not sure where to go from here."

Trowa set down his cup. "Have you got any help?"

"Yes, I took your suggestion." Quatre assumed that Trowa meant Heero.

"You're both resourceful, I'm sure you'll figure things out. If not, though..."

"Yes?"

"You know you're always welcome to come to me, don't you?" The hopeful note in Trowa's voice made Quatre's heart sink.

"I know. I need to go now."

"I miss you."

"I miss you too." Quatre didn't realize he had cut the connection before he had uttered the last sentence until he got up to leave, and by then it was too late.

##

It was nearly dark when Heero finally called. "Is there any place to eat around here?"

No preamble, no pleasantries. Quatre closed the book he had been reading and willed himself back to the present. "There's a bistro just around the corner from the hotel."

"I don't have any cash on me."

Quatre hadn't eaten since breakfast himself, and at the mention of food, his stomach reminded him grumpily that it needed to be fed. "I can meet you there in five minutes."

"Okay." Heero hung up.

Quatre stood up, indulged in a full-body stretch, and stacked his books neatly on the edge of his carrel. The lights were still on, casting a mellow glow over his workspace. "Sir?" he called out, hoping to catch the librarian's attention.

There was no response. Quatre heard his own voice echo faintly from the stacks and got the strange feeling that he was alone in the building. He knew that was ridiculous, but it still gave him a chill.

"Sir? I'm going to have to leave now. Thank you."

The lights went out in response, leaving only the grey illumination from the atrium dome to navigate by.

"Well, that was friendly," he grumbled, making his way out.

He dashed across the square through the rain with his bag held over his head, aiming for the bistro on the corner. He was so intent on his goal that he nearly collided with a black-clad figure, one of the very few left on the streets on the dreary evening. It was Heero.

"I've read everything," Heero said, grabbing Quatre's upper arm to steady him. "This might be interesting."

"Yes," Quatre said, trying not to sound as if he was catching his breath, "I thought you might enjoy the challenge."

"I don't think we'll need to compare notes," Heero said, turning away. "I probably have more intel than you do by now anyway."

"I was counting on that."

"Let's eat. Then we'll sleep."

##

Quatre felt he had barely fallen asleep before he felt himself being nudged awake again. He pushed the sheet away from his face to find that, aside from a sliver of light coming from the closet door, the room was in pitch darkness and he couldn't so much see as feel Heero's presence by the bed. "What is it?" he asked muzzily.

"Get up, we need to go." Heero's whisper hissed in the room with the quiet menace of a cannister of poison gas.

"What, now? What time is it?"

Instead of answering, Heero threw Quatre's clothes at him. "Get dressed."

Heero wasn't in the mood to talk, obviously. Frankly, neither was Quatre. He wasn't exactly awake, but his nerves were beginning to sing with that low, persistent anxiety that had been building up since that first morning in New Roma. He pulled on the jeans and sweater Heero had tossed him, laced up his boots by touch, and groped for his jacket.

Heero turned around and exited the room the moment Quatre stood up, leading the way out. The hotel was so silent that it seemed abandoned, and Quatre flinched when one of the steps creaked under his foot on the way down. He was about to head through the lobby door when Heero took a sharp turn toward the back rooms. "Bells," he breathed.

Quatre nodded, glad that one of them was awake enough to remember the brass bells mounted on the lobby doors. Opening those doors would have been as good as announcing they were sneaking out in the middle of the night, and Quatre supposed Heero had his reasons for avoiding that.

They made their way quietly through the office, kitchen and through the alley doors without incident. Outside, the moon and stars were obscured by a thick layer of clouds. The air was heavy and damp, suggesting heavier rain than the current light drizzle.

The streetlights cast enough illumination until they reached the outskirts of town, but then the darkness was complete. Quatre couldn't see anything beyond the metal gate that barred the way to the field at the northern boundary of the town.

"I'd have brought my headlamp if I'd known it was going to come to this," he muttered. He was still a little sleepy, and it was none too warm outside. He wanted to go back to bed.

"You can borrow this," Heero said, unhooking something from a keyring and handing it to Quatre. It was the size of a child's finger, matte black, and when Quatre poked one end of it he was nearly blinded by an intense purple-white light from the LED bulb at the other end.

"Thanks," he said, blinking the greenish afterglow from his eyes.

Heero, carrying a larger and more efficient flashlight of his own, took point as they squelched their way along the muddy road toward the base. There were tall weeds growing on the sides and between the wheelruts, and both of them were soaked from mid-thigh down before they came to another gate.

This one was a serious gate, meant to actually keep people out rather than to politely delimit a boundary. Two meters of reinforced chain link were topped with razored concertina wire, and a shorted-out keypad on one of its supporting pillars dangled loosely from a few wires. The weeds around the keypad box had been burned to the bare earth, suggesting that whoever had last tampered with it had met with an unfortunate accident.

"We could walk the perimeter," Quatre suggested feebly, aiming his flashlight at the weedy, uneven ground on the sides of the road.

Heero vetoed that idea by taking a rubber-gripped multitool out of the inner pocket of his jacket and manipulating it till the wire-cutting blades had been exposed. With a slight grunt of effort, he snipped though one of the low-voltage wires woven horizontally through the chain link and stepped back. "It's dead. The power source must have burnt out." He reached out to cut through one of the links.

Quatre stopped him. "No! That might be the ground wire. Snip all the other wires first--at both ends. Get rid of he current completely before you start to cut."

Quatre's light was aimed somewhere near Heero's belt, but in the backwash he could still see Heero's eyebrows raise scornfully. "Is that your professional opinion?"

Quatre let go of Heero's sleeve. "You can't get careless around electricity." He swung his light around the patch of scorched earth next to the defunct keypad to illustrate his point.

"You're the boss," Heero said, but he did as Quatre asked. He snipped the horizontal wires with such neat, almost dainty, precision that Quatre might have taken offense. "There. The current is drained. Shall we go in now?"

"Go ahead," Quatre said, and turned his back. He played his light along the path they had just taken, as if searching for interlopers, but in reality he was trying to reign in his temper. He didn't know if he was angry because he was a little bit afraid, or of he was frightened because of his anger, and he supposed it all came out the same. He needed to calm down. He needed to think.

"I've talked with some of the residents here," he said.

Heero paused in his methodical snipping. "What do they say?"

"Most of them didn't want to talk to me. I got the impression that their isolation is deliberate. The only person who would talk freely with me is Sophie."

"She's the girl at the hotel, right?" Heero asked, pausing his activity.

"Yes, but she's no girl. She's forty-one years old. She claims she can remember when the soldiers first came."

"That's not possible. She's probably interpreting stories from her parents as memories."

"I thought so too, but she has files of photos and documents that led me to believe otherwise. I spent some time with her yesterday and I have every reason to believe what she's saying is true."

"I'll need to see those documents." Heero went back to cutting an entrance in the fence.

"You can. Just ask her and she'll show you. Along with other, more physical, evidence if you ask her politely."

Heero was quiet for a moment, digesting the information. "Can anyone else back that up?" he asked at last.

"No. Like I said, the soldiers are long gone and no one is very keen on filling me in."

"Did you try bribery?"

The damp night air took a chilly turn, and Quatre pulled the collar of his coat against his neck. "Not everyone is motivated by money, you know."

"Did you try?" Heero asked relentlessly.

"Yes, I tried."

"I assume it failed, then," Heero said in a tone that implied Quatre had not tried hard enough. "The fence is open. Let's go in."

Fuming, Quatre turned around to see that Heero had cut a long arc in the fence. It was a skillful cut. Pushed back, it created a wide enough space for them to pass through; pulled into place, it looked completely undamaged.

Once on the other side, the wet night seemed even darker. Quatre aimed his flashlight from side to side, taking in the large redbrick building that dominated the landscape as well as the smaller clapboard buildings that lined the lane.

"I suggest we ignore the residences for now," Heero said. "We've only got three hours till dawn and we don't want to be seen coming from here."

"Right." Quatre played his light over the surface of the headquarters building. All he could see was brick and welded sheetmetal on the ground floor. "The doors and windows are sealed pretty securely, but there's a fire escape over there," he aimed his flashlight toward the back end of the building. "Maybe we can get in that way."

"If you say so."

Without answering, Quatre left the road and began to make his way toward the far corner of the building. The ground, saturated with rainwater, gave way under his boots. He staggered, found his balance, and began to squelch his way toward the fire escape.

Each step left a deep footprint behind as Quatre's boots sank into the ground, but he kept his flashlight beam and his gaze locked firmly on the fire escape. Behind him, he could hear Heero's gasps as he fought for his own footing, and he found that somehow gratifying.

"Almost there," he said, and then he cried out sharply in surprise as the ground gave way completely under his left foot.

He had the presence of mind to fling his arms out wide to catch his fall, but while it saved him a broken leg, it also earned him a mouthful of mud.

"Sinkhole," Heero said. He grabbed the back of Quatre's jacket and pulled him up and to the side. "The place is honeycombed with them."

Quatre spat, coughed, spat again. "How do you know?"

Heero aimed his light down on himself. He was coated with mud from chest to feet and his hair was drenched. "I'm surprised you hadn't found out earlier."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Quatre asked, looking down at his mud-soaked leg.

"They weren't that deep. I suggest we tread carefully from here on out."

Quatre took the advice to heart. It slowed them down considerably, but he tested the ground carefully before he set foot on it. He stumbled a few times in the boggy ground, but Heero, following two paces behind, followed without mishap.

Finally, panting, Quatre found himself under the fire escape. He took a deep breath, then stretched his arms up as high as he could go, but the bottom rung of the ladder was a handsbreadth out of his reach.

"I can't get it. Can you?"

Without even trying, Heero grunted out a negative. He wasn't any taller than Quatre was. "Maybe if I could jump, but not with ground like this." The mud was up over their bootlaces by now, and the drizzle was starting to turn into rain.

"Maybe we could file through the bars," Quatre said, shining his flashlight at the reinforced windows on the ground floor.

"It'll take too long. Here, get up." Heero bent over and laced his fingers together to make a step.

"Are you sure?"

"Get up!"

Quatre pulled his wet and muddy boot out of the ground and set it in Heero's hands. Before he had even gotten his palms against the wall, he felt himself being boosted up and narrowly avoided smacking his head on the bottom platform of the fire escape. "All right, I'm up," he said, clutching the wet and rusted rungs in his fists. He scrambled up a few more rungs, found his footing, and located the latching mechanism. "The ladder is coming down now," he warned Heero before pulling back the simple mechanical lock that held the ladder up.

With a screech and a crash that should have woken the entire town, the fire escape ladder descended into position. Heero followed a few seconds later.

"Let's go in," he panted. "We have two hours."


	4. Chapter 4

Heero and Quatre climbed up the fire escape without incident. The window on the second floor landing was not barred, but it was shuttered with scraps of wood and sheet metal nailed across the outside. Heero solved this minor problem by shoving his booted foot through the center, then using the butt end of his flashlight to clear away enough of the remaining scraps to let them pass through safely. Heero went first, and Quatre, with his smaller flashlight, followed immediately after.

Judging by the smell of wet char, the interior of the administrative building had experienced a fire at some point. Heero and Quatre played their lights around the room and discovered that the walls, though grimy and sprayed with old graffiti, were intact. The tiled floors were thick with dust, ash and debris, but seemed sound enough. There was no furniture, nothing on the walls. Even the light fixtures had been stripped to bare wires.

"They were very thorough when they moved out," Quatre said.

"Not so thorough. This place has been vandalized." Heero strode toward the center of the room, his boots crunching on cinders and debris. He aimed his light on a blackened patch of floor. "There was a fire here." He dusted the pile of blackened junk carefully with a gloved hand and held up a flat metal rod. "This looks like a slide from a filing cabinet or a desk drawer. And this," he said, holding up a heat-warped cylinder of partly-melted rubber, "would have been a caster. It seems like someone made a campfire out of whatever was available."

"Squatters, maybe?"

"Or looters, or maybe just kids looking for a thrill. It doesn't matter, though, they're long gone." Heero stood up from his crouch and started to sniff the corrupted air.

"How can you be so sure of that?"

"Because I smell animals." With that pronouncement, Heero exited a doorway, looking for something.

There was a stairwell just outside the room. With its marble steps and carved oak balustrade it might have been grand at one time, but now it just looked dingy and rather sinister. Heero shone his flashlight up the stairs, dismissed that direction, and began to descend.

"Why are you going down there?" Quatre asked. There were still several rooms on this floor that they could have explored, and the comment about animals had been rather disturbing.

"It's already been looted up there," Heero said, his boots clomping implacably down the chipped and cracked treads, "so if there's anything worth seeing, it's most likely underground. There are more places to hide."

Sometimes Quatre was mystified by the way Heero's mind worked, but then he reminded himself that that was why he had asked for Heero's help in the first place. He needed someone who thought differently than he did, someone who would search avenues that he himself would have dismissed as irrelevant or impossible. He went down the stairs after Heero, renewing his resolve to trust him.

The ground floor was even more of a shambles than the second floor, and Quatre wondered how in the world they were ever going to hope to find anything. The floor was coated with grime, ash, and broken furniture, and there was a thick, rank, meaty odor in the air.

Heero seemed undaunted by the mess and the fetid smell. In fact, he seemed to be sniffing the air with interest. Quatre followed him as he picked his way through the debris. He tried to step where Heero had stepped, hyper-aware of the sharp shards of metal and ceramic that could catch on his clothes and infect him with whatever that evil smell signified.

Heero cautiously hooded his light with one hand while he played it over the walls and ceiling. Oddly, this floor didn't seem to be as thoroughly stripped as the one above. There was a desk here, a cabinet there, and the pressed glass light fixtures in the ceiling were still intact. There were clear tracks worn through the debris on the floor, however, seemingly well-traveled.

"What do you suppose made those paths?" Quatre asked.

Heero dropped to a crouch and examined the floor. "I see footprints. Human." He paused. "That's odd."

"What?"

"Whoever made these was barefoot."

Heero rose from his crouch and walked purposefully toward a pair of white, swinging doors set in the left wall. "This looks like the most well-worn path," he said, pushing the doors open. They swung easily on their hinges.

Behind the doors there was a lab of sorts with waist-high work surfaces, deep sinks and plenty of storage cupboards. The meaty, ashy smell was mixed here with an undertone of chemicals from the broken, slowly evaporating bottles on the shelves, and Quatre felt his face twist into a grimace of disgust.

The smell didn't seem to be bothering Heero. He was once again examining the floor with interest. "Coming and going," he said in a low voice, as if to himself. He went to a cabinet built along one of the inner walls and pulled the door open. There had obviously been shelves built into it at one point, but they had been torn out, and at about knee height there was a hole just large enough for a person to wriggle through, provided that they were a smallish person. Quatre leaned forward to take a closer look at the hole, but just as quickly reeled back. A faint but definite breeze was blowing from the hole, and it reeked.

"I think I'm going to be sick," he said, coughing weakly.

"Go ahead. A little more mess won't matter," Heero said.

Quatre willed his abdominal muscles to loosen, and the nausea passed. "This can't possibly be healthy to breathe," he said. "Let's go back."

But apparently Heero had lost his damned mind. "It's in here," he said, poking his head into the hole.

"Are you saying that you want to go down there? Now?" Quatre couldn't quite believe what he was hearing.

"Yes."

"No."

In the backwash from their flashlights, Heero's face was cold anger. "So you don't trust me. You were just humoring me all this time."

"I'm not having this conversation with you again, Heero. You know I trust you." Quatre was very, very tired of that argument. "I just don't think you should go down there without investigating a little more, or at least picking up some equipment."

"I have a gun, a knife, and a flashlight. I don't know what else you'd think I'll be needing."

"I don't know. A rope? A transmitter? A tetanus shot?"

Heero made a noise that might have been a truncated laugh, or maybe the fetid air just made him gag a bit.

"Please, let's just go back and think this over," Quatre tried one more time.

"I thought you hired me to help investigate. This," he waved a hand toward the hole, "looks like something that needs investigating." He swung a leg over the edge.

"You're fired," Quatre said promptly.

Heero looked at him blankly for a moment. Then he smiled. "If I'm fired, then I'm free to do whatever I want."

He turned and had almost slithered up to his waist into the hole before Quatre, in desperation, grabbed the collar of his jacket and gave an almighty yank. He vaguely registered the sensation of something giving way in his lower back, but Heero came most of the way out of the hole and simply lay there on his back on the filthy floor, staring at him. That was a relief. Quatre had been mentally prepared to punch him into submission; he doubted he was have succeeded in that endeavor, but had been willing to try.

"Fine, you're not fired. You can go down there, but not now, not without proper preparation. We're going to go back now, and in the morning we'll go get some equipment and then you can do whatever insane thing you want. Deal?"

Heero shrugged and dusted himself off. "Whatever you say, Quatre."

"You shouldn't have done that," Heero said. They had made their way back to the hotel before daybreak, but it had been a near thing. Mostly because Quatre was having trouble walking. Once inside, he collapsed on his bed in his wet, dirty clothes and was not inclined to move until the spasms in his lower back subsided.

"Would you have stopped if I hadn't done it?" he asked.

"Probably not," Heero conceded. He took a small first aid kit from his bag and began to rummage through it.

"Well, then, I had to do it."

"Take these," Heero said, handing him a couple of yellow pills.

"What are they?"

"Muscle relaxants. They'll help your back."

Quatre's would have gladly gobbled them up, but an unpleasant thought struck him before he was able to. "Will they put me to sleep?"

"Possibly."

"No thanks, then."

"Mind telling me why not?"

"I'm not going to take my eyes off you. I don't trust you not to go running back to that building and shoving yourself through that forsaken hole before you're prepared."

"Quatre," Heero said patiently, as to a slow child, "you couldn't come chasing after me if you tried. You can't even walk right now. You might as well take the pills and spare yourself the pain."

"Oh." Well, that was certainly true. Quatre took the pills, dry swallowing them since getting up and getting himself a glass of water was too far beyond his powers at the moment.

Heero changed his clothes quickly and then began to root around in the pockets of Quatre's overcoat, which was hanging over the back of one of the chairs. "After the pills kick in, take a hot bath and get some sleep. Your back should be better in a day or so."

"What are you going to do?"

Heero held up the car keys. "I have errands to run, remember? I don't suppose you've got any cash."

"No, but you can take my card as long as you're going through my personal things."

"Thanks." Heero slipped Quatre's wallet into his own pocket then left the room, locking the door behind him.

As soon as the pills began to kick in, Quatre worked his way carefully out of his clothes and went to the bathroom to fill the tub with the hottest water he could stand. He didn't think there was anything worse than a pulled muscle in his back--at least he hoped not. He could not afford to have anything slowing him down right now.

He slid into the water with a sigh of relief. The water felt good and clean against his skin. He let himself soak for a few minutes before submerging completely to wet his hair. He took a bottle of the hotel's shampoo and doused his hair with it liberally, scrubbing it into his scalp with his fingernails. It took a long time to get the phantom smell of that evil little crawlspace out of his nose.

He didn't get out of the bath until the water began to cool, and then he only got out because the pills were making him drowsy and drowning in the bath would be counterproductive.

Yawning, he made a cursory pass over his skin with one of the rough towels before staggering back to his bed.

#

Quatre woke up when he was hit in the face with a sandwich.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was that Heero had done quite a lot of shopping. Heero sat on the floor, munching his own sandwich with one hand while the other was busy pulling things out of plastic bags. "You wanted me to be prepared. I prepared," Heero said without looking up.

"Um." Quatre palmed sleep out of his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow. His back complained, but not badly. It was probably just a strain after all. He began to unwrap the sandwich. "What time is it?"

"Six. It'll be full dark in an hour." Heero crammed the last of his sandwich into his mouth, stood up, and pulled his jeans off.

Roast beef. That was what was in the sandwich. There was some grainy brown stuff that Quatre assumed was mustard, too. He concentrated on his food until he was quite certain Heero was decent again. "I assume we're leaving as soon as it gets dark."

Heero pulled a black balaclava over his head. It matched the black climbing boots, black trousers and black pullover he was wearing. In the dark, he would be invisible. "You don't have to come with me."

"I need to make sure you're safe."

Heero shot him a look of pure contempt. "Whatever, Quatre."

Another bag held a headband-mounted light, several glow sticks, and a handheld GPS tracker. Heero opened a small plastic pouch with his teeth and slid out a card. He peeled a small tracking dot from the card and pasted it to the mastoid bone behind his left ear. He tossed the tracker itself to Quatre, this time not aiming directly for his face. Quatre was vaguely grateful for that.

"I had to drive for three hours to find all this stuff," Heero grumbled. He rolled the balaclava up to his forehead and mounted the headband on it. "They don't have roads here, they have mazes."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Quatre said. He secured the sheet around his waist and reached toward his bag for some clothes. He grunted softly when his back gave a twinge.

The grunt did not escape Heero. "You really should stay here. You're going to slow me down."

Quatre pulled his pants on under the sheet. "It'll get better as I move around. If it doesn't, then you can go on ahead and I'll catch up."

Heero looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Wait, do you think you're going down that hole with me?"

"Well, of course."

"No. That's not happening. One of us needs to stay topside, and it's not going to be me."

Quatre was going to argue, but then he realized that that was the only sensible thing to do. That small, fetid, dark hold might lead anywhere, and with no one to stay on top and monitor the other, who knew what would happen? Quatre suppressed a wince as his back complained again, then nodded. "All right, Heero."

Heero stared at him blankly for a moment as if he expected further argument. When none was forthcoming, he shrugged and pulled a pair of communicators out of the bag. He fitted one into his own ear before tossing the other to Quatre. "The batteries are supposed to last for twelve hours between charges. We'll turn them on once I'm inside."

"What happens after twelve hours?"

"I should be out by then, but if I'm not, then you don't come down after me. Do you understand?"

Duo never would have lied, especially not to Heero. Fortunately, Quatre was not Duo. "I understand."

The smell wasn't so bad this time. Maybe it was because the night was dry and breezy this time around or maybe because he was braced for it, Quatre could bear the stench much more easily. Or maybe it was that he was scared half to death.

Heero barely spoke on the walk over. He led the way, bulling his way through the rank weeds as if they offended him. Quatre passed quietly in his wake, not daring to break the silence.

They followed the route they had established the night before: up the fire escape, through the burned-out room, and down the marble stairs to the lab. The cupboard door, which they had left opened, was now closed. Quatre was unsurprised by that.

Heero switched on the communicator in his ear. Quatre did the same. "Testing," Heero said.

Quatre winced and found the dial to reduce the volume. "I hear you."

Heero nodded and handed him the end of the coil of nylon rope wound around one shoulder. Quatre secured it to a tap on one of the nearby sinks and gave it a few strong yanks to make sure it was secure. Heero ran the rest of the rope through the D-rings on the climbing harness he had strapped around his waist and upper thighs. This was probably not necessary as the ground behind the hole was sloping earth and rock rather than a free fall, but since they cold not see the bottom, it was a reasonable precaution.

Heero made one final check to make sure his gear was secured, then he sat down on the ground and stuck his legs into the hole. He looked up at Quatre one last time.

They should have said something to each other, Quatre thought later. They should have shaken hands, embraced, said something brave and reassuring. But they didn't. They just exchanged that one, brief look before Heero slid down into the dark.

Then, Quatre was alone.

Fear was the first thing that registered in Quatre's mind. It wasn't that he was alone; being alone had never bothered him. It wasn't the dark, either, since his flashlight was going strong. It might have been the silence, but he doubted that. It was Heero. Heero was what was scaring him.

Heero had only been gone for ten minutes, according to Quatre's watch, but it felt like an hour. He could hear breathing through the communicator in his ear, but Heero was maintaining his stubborn silence.

Quatre shifted on the dirty floor and zipped up his jacket. It was getting colder. He wished he had thought to bring some coffee with them.

"Bones," Heero said. His voice was so clear that he might have been sitting right next to Quatre.

"What do you mean, bones?" Quatre repeated. There was a tremor in his voice that had nothing to do with the chilly air.

"Not human. Rats. Birds. I think this is a cat. Was a cat."

"Where are you?"

"Down here."

Quatre took the GPS unit out of his pocket and looked at it, but it didn't tell him much. Heero was about six meters down and somewhere off to the left. He was down in the dark with the bones.

"I think this is what they eat," Heero said quietly. "I see tooth marks on some of them."

"What are you talking about? What's eating the bones?"

"Not what, who. The marks are from human teeth."

Quatre's skin tightened into gooseflesh. "That can't be right."

"No signs of fire. The bones don't appear to have been exposed to heat."

"Heero, are you saying that there are people down there eating raw rats?"

"I'm just telling you what I see," Heero said a bit shortly. "If it's that disturbing for you, I can just take off the comm."

"No, Heero, I'm sorry. I must have sounded angry, but I'm not. I'm just having trouble with this."

Heero made a noncommittal noise in his throat. "To tell you the truth, I'm having a little trouble believing it myself."

There was a rustling noise on Heero's end. "Are you all right?" Quatre asked.

"Yes, I was just getting out my knife," Heero said in a low murmur. "I hear voices."

Quatre held his breath. He had the feeling Heero was doing the same. A minute ticked by, then another, and when the silence was broken by Heero's gasp, Quatre jumped. "What is it?"

There was a long pause, then Heero whispered, "They're children."


	5. Chapter 5

Quatre paced the dirty floor of the lab with one hand cupping the communicator tightly to his ear. There was no practical reason to do so since it was designed to stay in by itself, but Quatre had always been uneasy when confronted by another living thing in distress, especially when he was helpless to do anything about it. And although wild horses would have made him confess it, Heero was certainly in distress.

For over ten minutes now he had been listening to Heero's slightly heavy breathing and, in the background, the strange sound of the subterranean children's voices. He hadn't wanted to speak for fear of breaking Heero's concentration, but the lack of news was wearing on his nerves.

"Heero," he said quietly into the radio, "maybe you should come back."

"That's not possible," Heero murmured back.

"What do you mean, 'not possible'?"

"They know I'm here, and they have no intention of letting me go."

"I don't understand. Have they said something? Done something? I can't quite hear them."

"They don't need to say anything," Heero said. "They have me cornered. I'm outnumbered. They don't want me to leave."

"Heero, they're _children_."

"No, they're not. Not anymore. Quatre, listen to me."

The quiet gravity in Heero's voice made Quatre's skin want to crawl off of his bones. "I'm listening," he whispered.

"They want something from me."

"What do they want?"

"I don't know. They just want something."

"Well, give it to them and get out of there!"

"Stop being stupid," Heero hissed. "They won't come near me. They don't want me to hear them and they have no goddamn fear. They're fucking with me, Quatre, and I have no idea why."

Quatre took a few moments to process that little speech. He paced a new rut on the floor, turning it over in his mind, listening to the faint murmurs in the background. "You said they weren't children," he said at last, thinking out loud. "What are they, then?"

"I don't know. They look like children, but they don't act like them. They act like...this is going to sound strange."

Quatre chuckled nervously. "Don't worry about it, it all sounds strange."

"I think they're older than they appear. Decades older. And they're wild."

"What do you mean by wild?"

"Feral. Untamed." Quatre was about to protest that he knew the dictionary definition of 'wild', but then Heero went on: "Like they have never had any human contact other than themselves."

Quatre didn't know what to say to that. Several half-formed questions flitted through his mind, but he could not think of how to articulate them. He remained silent, thinking.

"They're coming closer now," Heero said quietly.

Quatre strained to hear. He thought he heard shuffling footsteps, but there was some lower-frequency distortion in his earpiece so he couldn't be sure. He cursed himself for not insisting on cameras. "Are you all right?" he whispered.

Heero didn't answer. Someone else did.

"We won't hurt you," said a masculine voice. It was rough and deep, like the croaking of a bullfrog. It was definitely not a child's voice. It didn't even sound entirely human to Quatre.

"Who are you?" Heero asked.

"We are Iteration Sixteen," said another voice. It was feminine this time, but possessed the same croaking quality as the male's. It was a voice that hadn't been used in quite a long time.

"What is this place?" Heero asked--no, demanded.

"This is Project 119."

"What do you want from me?"

There was a sound like wind rushing through dry autumn leaves. It took Quatre a few seconds to realize he was hearing the children's laughter.

"We just want to help," said the female in a mockingly sweet tone.

"I don't need your help."

"You do, you just don't know it yet...old man." That was a new voice, and it sounded very close.

Several other voices chimed in at that point, some male, some female, some deep and guttural, some high and piercing, some farther, some nearer: "We just want to help. We will help you. It will be all right. We don't want to hurt you. You'll see..."

"What's in that syringe?" Heero asked suddenly, and Quatre's heart stopped beating for a moment.

"Eternity," one of the voices said, and then Heero screamed.

Conscious thought vanished as pure terror took over Quatre's mind. He launched himself toward the small, low hole in the wall, landing belly-down with his head and shoulders inside. The stench didn't even register as he began to wriggle through, but something had caught the back of his jacket and he couldn't move forward, nor could he struggle out of the garment. "Heero!"

"Stay...wait," Heero said, panting heavily. Quatre sincerely hoped it was the communicator's imperfect signal that made Heero's voice sound weak.

"Are you hurt?"

"They injected me with...I don't know. Listen to me."

"I'm listening."

"I'm alone now. They've gone."

"Gone where?"

"Listen, Quatre! I have to shut myself down now."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm going to lower my metabolism. Slow whatever they put in me down. I won't be able to move, so you'll have to help me."

"What, like put yourself in a coma?"

"Something like that. I'll be out for a day, maybe a day and a half. I'll wake up when we're safe."

Safe? Quatre had no idea what safety meant at the moment, for either of them. "What do I need to do?" he asked, wondering if it involved high explosives, which would at least be a decisive answer.

"I need you to get us both as far away from here as fast as possible." Heero's breathing was slowing, his voice was getting deeper as if he was drugged.

Quatre thought for a moment. "I can take you to my sister Irea. She's a doctor--"

"No, we need to stay planetside," Heero said. "Get me out of this hole, get the car, and...just go. Trust me on this, Quatre."

"Fine." Quatre crawled backward out of the hole, feeling his jacket tear in the back on whatever it had been caught on.

Once upright, he scanned the room quickly and found an eyebolt screwed into one of the support pillars near the center of the room. It seemed solid. He quickly secured a rope to a D-ring and clipped the ring to the bolt. A savage tug on the rope satisfied him that it would do the job. "Where should we go, then? Heero?"

"Anywhere..." Heero breathed, and then the line was silent.

##

It wasn't hard to bring Heero's inert body out of the hole with all the ropes and pulleys and caribiners at their disposal, but once outside it was raining and muddy, and Quatre knew there was no way he would be able to haul Heero through that. He had to get the car.

Getting back to the hotel was a slippery, messy job, and by the time he got there, Quatre was thoroughly wet and mud-splattered, and his back was aching. The only bright spot was that the filth and pain distracted him from feeling too worried about Heero.

Fortunately for him, Sophie was nowhere to be found when he let himself into the hotel, so he was able to make his way upstairs, change his clothes, wash a bit, and start packing his and Heero's things in privacy.

That didn't last, though. Sophie must have heard the commotion. She knocked timidly at the door, and Quatre cursed himself for not being more careful. "Come in, he called in the general direction of the door while he zipped Heero's traveling bag closed.

"Is something wrong?" Sophie asked. He pale face was all eyes--clearly she was worried. Quatre didn't blame her. He probably looked like a madman.

He tried a smile. "No, everything is okay. Thank you."

She looked around the room, at the disheveled bed and the half-packed bags and at Quatre himself. "Where is your friend?"

"He's suddenly been taken ill," Quatre said, and since it wasn't exactly a lie, it came out smoothly enough. "I'm going to take him to some friends of ours."

"Oh! I hope it's nothing serious."

"I don't think so, but I'd rather get him some help right away." He tried the smile again. It failed to put her at ease.

"Your friend is a good man. I like him very much."

"Uh...yes, he is," Quatre wondered if he sounded as idiotic as he felt. In his experience, when third parties had remarked to him on Heero's personality, they usually explored the themes of fear, awe, or murderous outrage. Sophie's simple expression of affection was outside his scope.

Well, aside from Relena. But Relena had the heart of an adventuress and didn't know what fear was, so when Heero had swashbuckled his way into her life, she had naturally been smitten. There aren't many Relenas in the world these days, he thought to himself ruefully.

"I, um, suppose we'll be checking out then. How much do I owe you?"

She raised her eyebrows quizzically. "Didn't Wing tell you? This is an old building, and it needs a lot of care. Wing fixed many, many things that would have cost me much more than your lodging. If anything, it is I who owe you."

Quatre didn't know what to say. He must have stammered out something, because Sophie smiled her shy little smile, squeezed his hand, and wished him a safe journey before passing quietly out of his life.


	6. Chapter 6

Quatre pulled a knit cap out of the bag of supplies he had bought at the little off-road market. The cap was a cheap, generic thing, suitably anonymous for his purposes. He pushed his hair away from his face and slipped it on, pulling it low down on his forehead and over his ears so that it hid his hair. From the glove compartment he took a pair of lightly-tinted driving glasses. He put them on, looked at himself in the rearview mirror, and had a shock when he didn't recognize himself for a moment. It wasn't just the simple disguise, either. Fatigue and stress had aged his face ten years, and there was a slightly mad glimmer visible behind the lenses, probably from driving for almost sixteen hours sustained on little more than black coffee and nerves.

Once he got used to his disguise, though, he decided it was good.

"I'll be right back," he murmured to Heero as he slipped out of the car. He might as well have been speaking to a tailor's manikin for all the reaction Heero gave.

Gravel crunched under his boots as he made his way to the motel office. He opened the door and flinched when a bell rang, his right hand automatically going to his hip for a nonexistent pistol before he arrested the movement and stood up straight.

A clerk appeared from behind a beaded curtain. He was a young and rather scruffy man with the air of one who has been interrupted from something else he would rather be doing. "Help you?"

"Do you have a double available for the night? Preferably on the ground floor." Quatre was surprised to find that his voice had become rough and hoarse and a little deeper than usual, the voice of a heavy smoker.

"Yes, I do." The clerk took a keycard from a pegboard on the wall and set it down on the counter. "Room 108, end of the row, nice and quiet."

"Fine."

"That'll be eighty credits for the night. I'll need to see some ID."

Quatre fished a wad of banknotes from the pocket of his overcoat. Not all of them were his, but he reasoned that Heero wouldn't mind a little pilfering in an emergency. With great deliberation, Quatre set down a fifty on the counter, then another. "My name is John Smith, and this is my ID." He added the last fifty and picked up the key.

The clerk made the cash disappear. "Checkout's at eleven, Mr. Smith."

"Thanks." Quatre walked back out.

He drove the car (which was looking even more nondescript than an ordinary rental due to a fine coating of road grit) to the end of the lot and parked just outside room 108. Grabbing the rest of the supplies from his earlier shopping excursion, he walked around to the passenger door and opened it. Heero sat there as he had for duration of the trip, staring straight ahead at nothing in particular, his hands lying limp in his lap. Quatre looked around for possible spectators before reaching across the inert body to unfasten the seat belt. "We're here. Get out of the car."

Heero got out. He stood on the gravel and let the wind blow his open coat around him, not even shivering in the cold.

"We're going to that door," he said, pointing. "Watch your step." Heero's eyes slowly tracked to the door, but he gave no indication that he understood, or even if he really saw it. Just to be safe, Quatre put his hand on Heero's elbow and steered him in the right direction, wary of any shift in Heero's weight that would indicate a loss of balance. However, Heero walked smoothly and stepped up when they left the graveled lot and got to the walkway. Perhaps he could see, then--or at least, he could see the real world as well as whatever was looping through his brain at the moment.

Quatre paused to open the door, then led Heero over the threshold before locking it again behind them as securely as was possible with the chain and deadbolt. That wasn't as secure as he would have liked, but it was better than nothing, and he was too frazzled and exhausted to think of anything better.

It was cold and dark in the room. Quatre located the light switch, but took a moment to pull the curtains closed before he turned it on.

Typical cheap motel décor was revealed in the tawdry light. The room had a couple of double beds with a shared nightstand, a cigarette-scarred table with two molded plastic chairs, and a low-end media center with a credit slot for "adult" channels. The paintings were ugly and the carpet was worn down to its sisal backing in places, but Quatre didn't mind a bit. It felt good to have a door between himself and the world. It felt good to not be on the move.

He set the plastic shopping bag down on the table and located the environmental controls. He cranked the heat up and set the humidity control to forty percent, hoping that would kill the damp, rank odor of mildew and the ghosts of thousands of cigarettes.

When that was done, he stood in front of Heero and held onto his upper arms. "Heero? It's okay, you're safe."

There was no reaction. Heero simply stood there like a breathing statue and stared at a point somewhere above Quatre's left shoulder. Quatre's heart sank.

"You said you'd come back when it was safe. We're safe now, okay? Please wake up. Heero?"

Heero blinked. His eyes focused.

"That's good. Come back," Quatre said, breathing a little easier.

Heero's eyes met his, and then, almost too fast for Quatre to process it, his complexion went grey, his mouth went slack, and his eyes rolled back before he lost all muscular control and started to fall.

"Shit!" Quatre said, instinctively throwing out his arms. He caught Heero before he hit the floor, but it was a near thing. "Heero? Heero!"

There was no response. Heero was a dead weight in his arms. The only sign of life was his steady breathing, which was only mildly comforting given his previous state. There wasn't anything that could be done, though, but put him on one of the beds and hope for the best.

Quatre struggled to his feet, wrestling Heero up as well, and didn't so much lay him down as heave him in the direction of the nearest bed. Heero landed like a rag doll, limbs bouncing on the mattress, but he was more or less in the middle of it.

Quatre removed Heero's shoes, wrestled him out of his coat, and then maneuvered him into the lateral recovery position, something he remembered from a first aid course years ago. Then he covered Heero with a blanket that he found in a closet. Heero looked better covered. His face had regained some color and he was breathing easily; he looked like a man who was deep in a peaceful slumber, someone who would eventually awake refreshed and ready to face a new day. It was a stark contrast to how Quatre himself felt. He was jittery, jiving, thoughts racing while chilly sweat slimed his skin, physically and mentally exhausted but unable to relax.

"Heero, I'll be right back," he said, patting Heero's shoulder gently, then unlocked the front door and went outside to the car.

There were only a few things left to bring in. He had a first aid kit and his traveling bag in the trunk of the car, and Heero's bag was in the back seat. He gathered all of it up and brought it inside, locking and bolting the door behind him once more.

"I'm going to take a shower," he informed the comatose figure on the bed. He wasn't sure if Heero could hear him, but it didn't seem right to ignore him.

The bathroom was just on this side of acceptable, with fixtures that were well-used and fairly clean, though ugly. Quatre stripped out of his clothes and left them in a pile on the floor. They were rank with nervous sweat. He left the cap and glasses beside the sink, though. He must not forget those.

He got the shower going and stood under the spray for a long time before getting down to the business of washing himself. At least the water was nice and hot. He was washing his hair when the thought occurred to him that Heero might not have recognized him with his disguise. Normally Heero wouldn't have been fooled by such a simple ruse, but Heero wasn't exactly normal now...and neither was Quatre. He looked awful. Damn. No wonder Heero had collapsed--he'd probably had the life scared out of him.

On the other hand, maybe that was good news. Maybe Heero would come around once the shock had worn off and then Quatre wouldn't be sitting up all night babysitting a hunk of breathing meat. That thought hadn't appealed to him at all.

Finished with his shower, Quatre dried off, dressed in fresh clothes and left the bathroom on a puff of steam. "Heero, are you--oh."

Heero was awake, sitting up against the headboard with the blanket pooled in his lap. He squinted at Quatre as if the light bothered his eyes. "Where--" he croaked out, and started to cough.

Of course, he had to be parched. Quatre went to the plastic bag full of groceries and pulled out a bottle of juice. He tossed it to Heero, who fumbled it. He righted it, pulled the cap off, and took a long drink.

"Better?" Quatre asked when Heero finally came up for air.

"Yeah. Where are we?"

Quatre tried to smile, but it felt awkward on his face. "We're in a cheap roadside motel in the middle of nowhere."

"What?"

"I'm not sure where we are, exactly, I just drove," Quatre confessed. "We're somewhere northeast of the military base, but the roads are so twisty that I'm not sure how far. All I know is that there's lots of trees, lots of fog, and lots of little villages with names like Swineherd Pond."

"Oh, I see. The middle of nowhere," Heero said, and took another drink to drown his hacking cough.

"Are you okay?" Quatre asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah. I'm a little lightheaded, but I'll be fine."

"Are you hungry?"

Heero shrugged.

"If you aren't, I am," Quatre said, quite truthfully. He had been too nervous to eat while driving and he hadn't had anything of substance since his and Heero's shared lunch the day before that, but he had at least had the foresight to know that thy would have to eat sometime. He snatched the plastic bag from the table and brought it to the bed, where he dumped out the contents by Heero's side.

"I don't know what you like, so I got sandwiches and some fruit and boiled eggs and...you know. Stuff that will keep for a day or so."

Heero examined the plastic triangles containing the sandwiches and chose one with roast beef and horseradish. He unwrapped it, sniffed it, and then tore into it with a will.

For a while, all Quatre could do was watch. He was pleased that Heero had an appetite, but he was a little alarmed to see how Heero was going about it. He was _wolfing_.

"You eat, too," Heero said through a mouthful of meat and bread. There was mayonnaise on the corner of his mouth. "You look like hell."

"I've been running on raw nerves and caffeine; I'll look better once I can get some sleep" Quatre said, although he couldn't have said why he was defending his looks, of all things. He picked up a sandwich pretty much at random and bit into it. And then, before he knew it, he was wolfing too.

They didn't stop until the entire bed was littered with sandwich wrappers, orange peels, pretzel crumbs, empty juice bottles, eggshells, wadded napkins and other litter. Quatre looked over the wreckage and stifled a burp. "We should clean this up. They're going to remember us if we leave a mess."

Heero solved the problem by the simple expedient of taking the corners of the top blanket and pulling them together in the center, tying a knot, and then chucking the whole thing into a corner. "We'll put it in the car when we leave. No one ever wonders why a blanket or two to go missing in these places; it's practically expected. Problem solved."

"Right," Quatre said, grinning. He would never in a million years have thought of doing that. It was brilliant.

"I need my datapad."

Quatre glanced at him, concerned. Heero looked much better than he had before, but still far from well.

"I just need it for a few notes. I have a rough idea for the layout of the floor I was on, and I have descriptions of those children. I'd like to get it all down before..." he trailed off, a vaguely haunted look coming into his eyes. "I'm very tired. I want to get it down before I sleep."

Knowing that Heero was just going to get up and get it himself if Quatre refused, he said, "Okay, sure," and rummaged around in Heero's bag till he felt the hard plastic case of the datapad. He handed it across to Heero, who went right to work. Quatre took the opportunity to go back to the bathroom to brush his teeth and comb the last of the knots out of his hair. It was good to be clean again.

When he returned, he saw that Heero had finished with the datpad and had slid under the remaining blankets on his bed. "I'm done. I'm going to sleep." He punched his pillow a few times and lay down on his side. "By the way, where are we going?"

"I'm aiming for Sanq. I think we could reach the border in a couple of hours if we hit the right roads."

Heero was thoughtfully silent for a few moments. Quatre fancied he could almost hear the ticking going on behind those dark blue eyes as Heero processed the information, analyzed it, and came up with something acceptable. "Sanq will be good place for us. For a while, anyway. Go to sleep, Quatre," Heero said, and then he followed his own advice.

Quatre climbed into his own bed, but it wasn't to go to sleep--not just yet. He pulled his laptop out of its case and powered it up, then opened up his e-mail and typed in an address that he didn't use often enough.

_I hear you're going to be in Sanq for the next couple of weeks_, he typed. _I will see you there soon._

He stopped and thought of all the things that he could have added, about how Heero was with him, about how danger might be following them, about the questions he had about that strange little town that had once been so quietly prosperous, but he couldn't not bring himself to write the words. He should have also signed off with love, but all he could manage was a single initial before hitting the Send button, and then it was too late.

It seemed he was always too late with Trowa.

##

Heero didn't want to drive. Quatre had offered him the opportunity in the morning, thinking that maybe after his ordeal he would want to have some sort of control over things, but Heero simply climbed into the passenger seat and waited in silence for Quatre to start the car.

They didn't speak for perhaps the first half hour. Neither of them even touched the radio in the car to break the silence. Quatre was too busy trying to find a road north, and what thoughts he didn't have on navigation were spent on Trowa and what he was going to do when Trowa inevitably invited him to meet.

Quatre might have engaged Heero in conversation to distract himself from those thoughts, but Heero seemed to be in a quiet, broody sort of mood, and it seemed best to leave him to his own thoughts. He had seemed well enough in the morning. He had looked healthy enough, and he had showered, dressed and eaten some breakfast with no apparent discomfort. If he was a bit on the terse side, well, that was Heero. Aside from that, he probably had enough processing of his own to do, and it was better that Quatre left him alone to do that in peace.

That was why it was such a shock when Heero suddenly muttered, "No pain."

"Excuse me?" Quatre asked when he had aimed the car away from the ditch he had nearly run them into.

"Those children. I don't think they felt any pain."

"What makes you say that?"

"They were fast, and they were strong. One or two of them could have overpowered me," Heero said, and he shuddered deeply. Quatre glanced over and saw with alarm that Heero had gone very pale and that there was a light sheen of sweat on his upper lip.

"Heero, are you feeling all right?"

Hero spared him a flat glance before staring though the windshield again. "Chills. It's an immune response. I should be okay."

That worried Quatre. As far as he knew, Heero had never been sick a day in his life. "If you're feeling ill, maybe you should lie down in the back seat. My coat is in my bag, you can wear--"

Heero cut him off as if he hadn't heard. "They were showing me that they had no fear, but I wasn't paying attention. They're fast, they're strong, they're cunning, and they feel no pain."

"And therefore no fear," Quatre concluded. He scanned the road ahead, looking for signposts through the lingering shreds of fog. There were none. He risked a glance at Heero, who was staring stonily forward. "But how do you _know_?"

Heero reached into his coat pocket. He took something out, something black and cylindrical and heavy. Quatre recognized it as Heero's multitool. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Heero pulled something like an awl out of the hilt. Heero regarded it dispassionately for a moment, the bright, oiled, needle-like instrument, before bringing it down in a swift movement into his own thigh.

Quatre hadn't realized he had stopped the car until he found himself looking directly into Heero's eyes--Heero's lucid, knowing, and frightened eyes.

"I know, because I feel no pain."


	7. Chapter 7

Quatre wanted to shout with relief when he and Heero crossed the border into Sanq. It probably would have unnerved Heero, though, so he carefully didn't say anything as he negotiated the roads toward New Port City, the windswept jewel of the tiny, orderly, peaceful nation. "We're almost there," he told Heero, who was slumped in the passenger seat looking grumpy.

Grumpy was actually an improvement from his earlier fey, almost delirious mood. Grumpy was normal. They had taken the time earlier to clean out the awl wound on his thigh and bandage it. It wasn't a large wound, but it was deep, and Quatre was worried about infection. If Heero had any specific worries, he didn't give voice to them. He had gone about the first aid process stoically, and had silently agreed to exchange his tight black jeans for a pair of Quatre's pants, which, because Quatre preferred a looser fit, covered the bandages better.

"How are you feeling?" Quatre asked as he drove the past the border checkpoint.

"I'm okay."

"There are clinics in town. Maybe we should have that wound looked after."

"It doesn't hurt."

"That's what's worrying me."

Heero glanced at him, and there was something unfamiliar in the look in his eyes and the set of his mouth, something very vulnerable and un-Heero-like. It was so fleeting that Quatre might have imagined it if he hadn't been paying attention to the roadsigns. "I don't think it's necessary to worry about me."

"Not necessary," Quatre scoffed. He didn't complete the thought aloud; he didn't need to. A week ago, Heero had been snug in his lair doing whatever it was he did, then Quatre had dragged him into an unknown situation, placed him at great physical risk, and now they were heading into more unknowns. It was, in Quatre's opinion, quite necessary to worry. "I'm sorry, Heero," he said softly.

"Don't be. I know what you're thinking, Quatre. I came into this of my own free will, so you can't really accept any of the blame."

"But you didn't know--"

"Neither did you. If you had known, you would have told Trowa to mind his own business."

Guilt, almost swatted down by then, rose up again. "To tell you the truth, I don't think Trowa intended for me to personally jump into this. I think he wanted it investigated, but was hoping that I would come to him and...well. Come to him."

Quatre could feel Heero's eyes on him, but kept his own gaze fixed firmly on the road. "If you don't mind my asking," Heero said, "what exactly is your relationship with Trowa?"

Quatre did mind him asking, but he answered Heero anyway. "To quote Duo, it's a deeply fucked up one."

* * *

They reached the capitol late in the afternoon, just as the sun was skimming the tops of the trees. Heero had fallen into a light doze, which rather worried Quatre, but not enough to wake him. He was growing wary of Heero's attenuating temper. It might or might not have had anything to do with Heero's experience with the children of Iteration Sixteen, but the mood swings Heero had been displaying were uncomfortable enough that Quatre was glad for the simple quiet. Quatre was, he had to admit, almost afraid of Heero, rather than afraid _for_ Heero.

That was why he jumped a little when Heero woke as they were nearing their destination and shoved himself abruptly upright in his seat. "Where are we?"

"At the events grounds at Sinow Park," Quatre said.

Sinow Park was a massive, sprawling park that was nearly one quarter the size of New Port City itself. Both he and Heero had spent a lot of time there during the war as guests of Sanq; it had been a wilderness of hilly rainforest at the time, but had been groomed into a model 'ecological' public park in the intervening years. It now hosted an extensive botanical garden, a zoological garden, innumerable hiking trails and one of the most expensive-to-book events grounds in the world, which was the current home for the Cirque des Cauchemars.

Quatre stopped the car at the gates, which were tall, ornate, and definitely closed, and slid his ID card through the reader. A video panel came to life, and the green and white park logo appeared. "Welcome, guest," said a smooth, genderless voice, and the gates swung smoothly open.

"What the hell are we doing here?" Heero asked.

Quatre suddenly realized that he had neglected to tell Heero exactly where they were going and why. Heero must have assumed that going to Sanq meant going to Relena. "This is where we are staying. I hope you don't mind," Quatre said as he parked the car in the extensive guest lot. It was the only car there.

"Mind what? I thought--" Heero cut himself short as he caught sight of the three tall circus tents in silver and black canvas in the west, beyond a line of trees. "Oh."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you earlier, but there was just so much going on." Quatre reached for the phone in his jacket pocket. "I could call Relena if you'd rather, or I could book you into a hotel. It's no problem."

"No," Heero said. To Quatre's surprise, he began to laugh. "No, this should be like old times."

Quatre wanted to know what Heero meant by that, but his attention was caught by a figure striding toward the car from the direction of the lowering sun, and he suddenly couldn't speak.

He would have known that silhouette anywhere. A small ball of electricity began to spin somewhere in his belly as the figure drew closer, and his mouth went dry. He didn't know if he could open the car door, let alone stand, but somehow he did just that.

Trowa wore a long black duster that flapped theatrically behind him in the chilly breeze. Though not a tall man, Trowa's long legs and poised bearing gave the impression of lanky height, and the way his hair hung over one eye gave him an aura of elegant mystery. "You're here," Trowa said in his low, warm voice, a voice only for Quatre; a voice like melting honey. Trowa spread his arms out in welcome.

Quatre could not stop going to him any more than he could stop his heart from beating. "Trowa," he said, and then he couldn't say anything else because Trowa was holding him, drowning him in the scents of cold winds and dry grass and greasepaint, smothering him against that hard, spare chest, and the electric sensation in his stomach began to travel downward. Quatre barely suppressed the shudder that ran down his spine: it was made up of equal parts of terror and eroticism.

"It's so good to see you." Trowa rubbed his cheek against Quatre's hair. "How are you?"

"I'm..." Quatre didn't know how to answer that question. He rested his head against Trowa's shoulder instead and breathed him in. "It's good to see you, too."

A cool hand stroked Quatre's neck. "It's been too long. You haven't been keeping in touch."

"I'm sorry."

Trowa's hand went from Quatre's neck to his cheek, then to his chin, and he tilted Quatre's head up, and his lips were very close, and Quatre thought he might collapse from sheer sensory overload, but the kiss never landed. "Who is in the car with you?" Trowa asked, his voice suddenly cold and suspicious.

"Heero." The spell was broken; the electric sensation disappeared. Quatre pulled away from Trowa and ran to the passenger side of the car, practically tearing the door open. "Are you okay?"

Heero looked at him coolly. "I hope I didn't interrupt your moment."

* * *

Heero made it back to the encampment behind the tents under his own power, though he was limping a bit on his wounded leg. Quatre kept a close eye on him, but Heero waved him off when he gestured to help. Trowa, for his part, merely led the way.

They went through the trees and into a colorful chaos full of vehicles, machinery, animals and people, the last of whom were by far the most interesting. There were muscular roustabouts, delicate dancers, grotesque performers, rushing planners, intense musicians, flamboyant artists, wrathful managers, and all types and extremes of people milling about, all focused intently on their particular jobs and not giving either Quatre or Heero a second glance.

Trowa, however, had an air that caused all the noise and activity in his specific vicinity to pause for a moment, made all eyes focus on him, and created a microsecond of silent respect before closing back in on their tasks. Quatre found it fascinating.

The three of them wound their way through the back lot toward an area shaded by very tall trees; colder but with less wind, where all the habitable vehicles were stored. Most of them were simple RVs or even campers hitched to trucks, but there were a few lavish houses on wheels. There was one at the back, though, that took Quatre's breath away.

It was two stories tall, as wide as most roads would allow, and shiny black save for the gold and silver of the circus's logo painted on the sides. There was a driver's cabin on top, and Quatre could see the faint, cold light of computer monitors coming from the upper ports in the back. More wheels than seemed practical supported the entire thing, but as he looked closer he could see jointed axles underneath, and he realized that the ground clearance was almost as high as his head. "I had no idea they made such a thing," he said in awe, staring up at the immense vehicle.

"They didn't," Trowa said. "I had it made from my specs."

"It's a wonder you can drive it anywhere. It's huge!"

"I can drive it wherever commercial transport vehicles can go, which is damn near everywhere." Trowa put his hands on his hips and looked up at it. His lips curved in a proud smile. "One day, I'm going to make this baby fly."

"That's impossible," Heero said, giving it a critical eye.

"We don't use that word here," Trowa said mildly. He took a keyring from his pocket, pushed a button on one of the tabs, and waited while an elaborate stairway unfurled smoothly from the front hatch. Then the hatch opened, letting a beam of warm, inviting light illuminate the gloomy evening. "After you, gentlemen."

* * *

"Heero, take off your pants. Or, rather, take off Quatre's pants," Trowa said.

Quatre, who had been stunned into silence by the sheer amount of stuff in Trowa's vehicle, whirled around with a squawk. "My pants?"

They were standing in Trowa's rather crowded bedroom, which was cut off from the rest of the vehicle by a stiff accordion curtain. There was a large bed which took up half of the floorspace; the other half was taken up by what looked like a closet turned inside out. There were baskets and drawers and shoetrees and shelves and mirrors from floor to ceiling, and what little floorspace that the three of them occupied was shared with discarded clothing, sticks of makeup, battered books, and the various and sundry litter of a bachelor too busy to take care of the mundane details of his personal space.

Trowa spared Quatre a brief smile before turning back to Heero. "Unless you have radically changed your preference in clothing, I believe those are a pair of Quatre's work pants you are wearing. Take them off."

"Why?"

"Your leg is hurt. I want to know how it is."

"It's fine."

Trowa sighed. A switchblade knife appeared in his right hand, the blade springing from the shaft with a wicked snick. "You can take them off, or I can take them off for you. I can tell you're not feeling your best."

To Quatre's surprise, Heero sat down on the edge of the bed, toed off his shoes, and pulled the pants off without further comment. Heero, Quatre had found to his discomfort, did not wear underwear.

"That's a very neatly done bandage," Trowa said, removing the tape with a pulling, sticky sound. Quatre winced. A second later, Trowa said, "It doesn't look infected."

"I don't think it is." Heero said.

"Still, it looks deep. I'm going to call our doctor to have a quick look at it."

"If you insist."

"You're shaking. Are you cold?"

"A little. I'm all right."

Quatre frowned and risked a glance over his shoulder. Trowa, still wearing his long black coat, was kneeling between Heero's bare legs, prodding the wound in Heero's thigh with his long, sensitive fingers. Quatre looked away again, firmly squashing some singularly inappropriate thoughts, and began to count Trowa's shoes.

"How did this happen?" Trowa asked.

"It's self-inflicted," Heero said with startling honesty.

Seventeen, Quatre counted, and risked another glance over his shoulder. "It's a long story," he said before looking back to Trowa's shoes and looking for the eighteenth.

"I'll bet it is." Trowa pulled a slim black phone from the pocket of his black jeans, but paused before he punched in a number. "Heero, if the doctor asks you how that happened, I'd advise you to lie."

"If you say so."

"I do. Oh, and Heero," Trowa pulled something from one of the wire mesh baskets lining the walls and tossed it toward him. "Wear these."

They were a pair of white cotton boxers.

* * *

Trowa set a large cast iron skillet on the stovetop and turned up the gas flame. The doctor had arrived within minutes of his call and was now in the bedroom, probably wondering why her patient was lying about how he had gotten the awl bit of his multitool stuck into his thigh, but Quatre supposed that wasn't really any of his business. His business was to cut up the shallots and garlic that Trowa had set in front of him, and he was attending to it with full concentration.

"I didn't expect you to rush headlong into this, you know," Trowa said.

Quatre re-minced the already minced garlic. "I realize that now."

"I thought you and Heero might put those heads of yours together to think a bit before you acted."

Quatre, stung, felt the blood rise in his cheeks. "Yes, I suppose we should have."

He waited for the next not-quite-accusation to come, but it didn't. "How are those shallots coming along?" Trowa asked instead.

"What? Oh, they're done."

Trowa scraped them into the skillet along with the browning sausages. "There are some potatoes and mushrooms in the fridge. If you wouldn't mind."

"No, of course not." Quatre dove into the refrigerator and found more things to chop up.

There was silence for a few minutes while Trowa concentrated on his cooking. It smelled wonderful, and Quatre was beginning to feel lightheaded. He hadn't realized he had been quite so hungry.

Trowa put the sausages aside and produced a bottle of red wine and three glasses. Without asking Quatre if he wanted any, he drew the cork from the bottle and poured two of the glasses nearly to their brims. "Here. It'll help sharpen your appetite," he said, setting a glass by Quatre's elbow.

"I don't think it can get much sharper," Quatre said, but he took a sip anyway. The wine felt cool in his mouth but warm in his body, and he felt the tension begin to melt away.

"So tell me," Trowa said, stepping a little closer, "why exactly did Heero stab himself in the thigh?"

Quatre took a deep breath. He knew that Trowa was not going to take another brush-off as an answer, so he fortified himself with another swallow of wine and told the tale as well as he could. "I guess it all started in Fort Lorraine..." he began, and his wineglass was empty by the time he finished.

* * *

The doctor said that there wasn't much wrong with Heero's leg. She tactfully refrained from commenting on the rest of him, and took her leave. Shortly afterward, Heero, mercifully dressed, came out of the bedroom and seated himself in the dining nook off the tiny kitchen. He looked pale, tired, and not in any mood for nonsense. "I told her I fell on a nail," he said to Trowa.

"Ah...yes," Trowa said. He poured Heero a glass of wine before refilling his and Quatre's glasses.

"You told me to lie," Heero said.

"And you did. I'm sure it was fine."

"I suppose you want to know the rest of it," Heero said sullenly.

"Quatre has already filled me in, thank you. Are you hungry?"

Quatre fully expected Heero to say no; he looked a little ill and less than inclined to eat the hearty meal he and Trowa had prepared, but he was wrong. As soon as he was served, Heero focused all of his considerable attention on the food, much like he had wolfed his meal the previous night. Quatre watched him with a mixture of amusement and alarm.

"I guess he was hungry," Trowa said in a low voice as he served himself.

"After what he's been through, can you blame him?" Quatre said, and Trowa conceded the point silently before starting in on his own meal.

The food was very good, and there was plenty of it; Quatre felt himself relaxing for the first time in days as the food hit his stomach and the level in his wineglass slowly dwindled. He was so intent on savoring it that his plate was almost empty before he realized that Trowa was giving him that _look_ over the rim of his wineglass.

It was a slow, contemplative, almost predatory look, as if Trowa was wondering how he would taste. That look, simultaneously wolfish and feline, sent a thrill down Quatre's spine at the same time as a feeling of fear settled into his stomach. It always started that way when they were together, and Quatre wondered why he had thought that Heero being there would make any difference.

"A walk along the river might be nice after dinner," Trowa suggested. "The wind seems to have died down."

"I've got things to do," Heero said, and Quatre could have cheerfully kicked him. Maybe if Heero stuck around, then he and Trowa could avoid this whole painful farce.

"I should probably--" Quatre began, but Trowa silenced him with another one of those long, searching looks.

"We haven't seen each other in months," Trowa pointed out with just the faintest hint of reproach in his voice.

Quatre didn't have a thing to say to that. While it was true, it also seemed a bit like emotional blackmail. He was about to make some sort of excuse for himself when Trowa smiled and placed a hand over his.

"I won't keep you too long. I just want to spend a little time with you."

Oh, hell. "That would be nice," he said, returning the smile.

"It's settled, then," Trowa said, and finished off his last few bites.

For his part, Quatre couldn't eat any more. He sat and rearranged the food on his plate for a few minutes before Heero caught his eye.

Heero was clearly aware that something was going on, but he was just as clearly confused as to what it might be. His brows were drawn together and he inclined his head to one side in a silent demand to know what was going on. Quatre smiled and shook his head to indicate that it was nothing, but Heero still looked unsatisfied. Fortunately, he seemed inclined to leave it alone for the moment.

While Quatre helped Trowa clear the table, Heero rose from his seat. "I want to replace some of my equipment. I'll need cash."

"I don't have much," Quatre said, leafing through his wallet. He held out his company credit card. "You can use this if you really need to."

Heero looked at the card, then shook his head. "No, I need cash."

Quatre didn't even want to know why, he just silently forked over the forty or so credits he had left. Heero stared at the notes as if he expected more.

It was quite a surprise when Trowa pulled a rather thick wad of banknotes out of his own wallet and added them to the pile on the table. "Here. I got you into this mess in the first place, I should contribute to the cause."

"I appreciate it," Heero said, stuffing the cash into his pocket. Then he left without another word.

"Well," Trowa said, toying with his wineglass, "I don't think I've ever seen Heero so..."

"Confrontational," Quatre finished for him. "I don't think he didn't even really want that money; he just wanted to get a rise out of me." He picked up his own glass, drained it, and set it down.

"Do you think it's because of what those children did to him?" Trowa asked after a thoughtful pause.

"That worries me too, but he's been like that since I called him. A little hostile, a little demanding. It's worse now, though."

Trowa refilled Quatre's glass and then leaned forward, all attention. "Maybe it's not the injection, then. Why was he acting that way in the first place?"

"I don't know. Maybe he's testing me."

"But you and Heero always seemed to get along."

Quatre had thought so too, but the facts remained. "Maybe he resents that I pulled him away from his life. Maybe he was finally content for once."

Trowa's chuckle was soft and rich like the wine. "I don't think Heero has ever been content with being content, if you know what I mean."

"You're right. He never did manage to figure out what he wants out of life."

Trowa leaned forward another degree or two and put his hand over Quatre's. The tough skin of his palm was very warm. "What about you? Have you figured out what you want in life?"

"What do you mean? I have a fine life," Quatre said, maybe a little defensively. "I love my work and I'm surrounded by good people, and-" He was cut off as Trowa's hand slid under the table and began to caress Quatre's knee and thigh. Hormones flooded his system as he looked into Trowa's eyes and saw that smoky, speculative hunger there.

"And?" Trowa prompted.

"I have you," Quatre whispered, helpless against that look, that touch.

"Yeah, you have me." Trowa smiled, and it was all over. Quatre surrendered.

* * *

The warm afterglow lasted until about ten seconds after Trowa fell asleep.

Till then, Quatre had been floating in a deep well of drowsiness, wondering vaguely why he had been so reluctant to get in bed with Trowa in the first place. He had been thoroughly satisfied in every possible way and was considering going to sleep himself when he felt Trowa's heart skip a beat under his hand.

It didn't really do that, of course. Quatre had his palm on Trowa's bare chest and could feel the strong steady beat thumping away like it always did. Trowa was alive, healthy, and his skin was definitely not going stone cold against Quatre's...

He shook himself a little. "Stop it, stupid," he whispered, and tried to settle down again. He rolled away from Trowa's side, thinking that lack of physical contact might make the flashes of panic stop coming.

It didn't.

Every time he closed his eyes, he heard Trowa's breathing slow down and catch horribly in his throat before stopping completely. He didn't hear this with his ears, exactly; it was all in his imagination. The problem was that his imagination was not only vivid, it was _loud_.

He knew he was being irrational. That was probably the worst part. Having sex with Trowa was not going to cause his death, he was absolutely aware of that fact. Yet somehow, over the slow course of years, some small, sick part of his mind had cross-wired the sensation of coming inside Trowa's body with the memory of blasting the Vayeate out of the sky with Wing's buster rifle, and no amount of reason or logic could shake it loose.

He had to get up. He couldn't lay beside the dying man--_no, Trowa is not dying!_--or he would have heart attack himself. He got up carefully, mindful of the shakiness of his legs, pulled on the pants he had abandoned on the bedroom floor and walked into the main cabin of the vehicle. He had the vague idea of getting himself a glass of water or perhaps some more wine, but his feet had their own ideas. He grabbed a jacket from a peg near the front door and hit the button that opened the hatch. He had to get out.


	8. Chapter 8

"Quatre, stop that."

Quatre turned away from his examination of the night sky. He couldn't see anything in the darkness but a vague silhouette, but of course he recognized the voice. He had thought Trowa was asleep. "Stop what?" he asked.

Trowa stepped closer. "Stop thinking whatever it is you're thinking and come inside."

That made Quatre angry for a moment: Who was Trowa to presume to know what he was thinking and to tell him to stop? Then he took stock of himself: He was alone on the trampled grass outside of Trowa's vehicle, in the middle of a chilly October night when anyone with any sense would have been in bed, and he was thinking some pretty ridiculous thoughts. Trowa was right, it was time to stop.

"All right," he murmured, and followed Trowa inside.

Trowa, instead of leading him to the bedroom as expected, slid into the small kitchen banquette and gestured for Quatre to do the same. Although Quatre didn't care for the inquisitorial setting and would much rather have slid between the sheets and at least pretended to sleep, he took a seat opposite Trowa, who studied him for a long moment before asking, "Did you have one of your...visions again?"

"They're not _visions_, Trowa," Quatre said.

"Well, whatever it is you have when you're absolutely convinced that I'm dying every time we make love."

Trowa sounded slightly testy, and Quatre knew it was for a good reason. He was being absurd. No, he _was_ absurd. He had allowed his imagination to not only run away with him, but to grow Vernier engines and rocket him halfway across the solar system. "I didn't mean to make you angry," he said quietly.

Trowa reached across the table and took Quatre's wrist in his hand, squeezing it with almost ferocious strength before letting go. "I'm not angry, you idiot, I'm worried," he said, equally as quietly, but much more intensely. "I thought you were going to talk to someone about this."

Oh, yes, the psychologist issue. Damn.

It wasn't that Quatre had anything against the profession. He didn't. He had even tried a few sessions with a therapist when stress bothered him, and felt he had benefited from it.

On this particular issue, however, he was reluctant to consult a professional. What could he say? That his sexual life was quite satisfactory, but that he couldn't fall asleep afterwards with the man he loved because he was convinced he had killed him? And then further explain that he had once intended to do just that? And that he had had the means to do so? And that had damn near succeeded? And that it was a blue-eyed miracle that he actually hadn't after all?

What could someone make of that--that he had a fear of _commitment_?

"Trowa, I love you," was all Quatre could think of to say.

"I know. Me, too."

It wasn't the most passionate declaration of love ever, but it still hit Quatre hard because it was true: true as stone, true as space. His shoulders sagged as he let out a breath; he was suddenly overcome with physical exhaustion and emotional attenuation.

"Come on, let's go to sleep." Trowa said, and led him to bed.

* * *

Life at the circus began early. Animals needed to be fed and exercised, costumes mended, props repaired, muscles warmed and limbered for the first performance at eleven o'clock. Trowa slid out of bed before dawn, obviously taking pains not to disturb Quatre, and silently padded off to the kitchen to begin his day.

He need not have bothered. Quatre had not had a restful night, and he woke as soon as he felt Trowa begin to stir beside him. He stayed in bed anyway, gazing out the bedroom window at the fading stars. It looked like it was going to be a clear morning.

Presently it occurred to him that he hadn't seen Heero since Heero had commandeered his cash and car keys the evening before. He sat up, intending to go look for him, but at that moment Trowa returned to the room carrying two mugs of something fragrant and steaming. "I thought you were awake," he said, setting the mug down on a little table beside the bed. He reached out and smoothed Quatre's hair, which was probably sticking up in ridiculous directions after a restless night. "Can't you get back to sleep?"

Quatre shook his head. "Have you seen Heero?"

"He's sound asleep on the couch."

Quatre couldn't quite make out Trowa's expression in the dim light, but he was certain Trowa was not happy. "Is something wrong?"

"He's _sound_ asleep on the couch," Trowa clarified. "It's not more than five steps away from the kitchen, but I was able to make coffee and a couple of calls without him springing up and shoving a gun up one of my nostrils. The only reason I'm sure he's still alive is that he's snoring."

"He only sleeps deeply enough to snore when he feels completely safe. Maybe he's comfortable here."

"Maybe you're right." Trowa sounded doubtful, though. He took a long, thoughtful drink of his coffee. Quatre did the same.

"I'll keep an eye on him," Quatre said after a moment. "You'll be back at eight, right?"

"Perhaps before," said Trowa. Eight o'clock was when the first burst of morning activity calmed down enough for the human contingent of the circus to sit down to some breakfast.

"Okay, and if he's not, maybe you could call your doctor back to have a look at him."

"I'll ask her." Trowa sat down on the mattress, gave Quatre a brief, coffee-flavored kiss, and stood back up. "I have to go now. You know where to find me if you need anything."

Quatre nodded, and Trowa left with the soft swoosh of his leather coat flapping behind him.

* * *

Quatre considered trying to rest a little more, but his curiosity and concern drove him from the bed. He got up, threw on a discarded robe, and made his way to the front of the vehicle.

Heero was curled up on a section of the wide, deep sofa, sound asleep under a colorful jumble of knitted blankets. He was snoring through parted lips, but it was a quiet, peaceful kind of snoring. He looked very relaxed. The vertical frown line that had almost become a permanent wrinkle in his brow had smoothed. He didn't seem to be unwell.

Quatre reached out to touch him, but before his fingertips made contact he let out a startled gasp as a hand snapped itself closed around his wrist. Heero was awake. Awake, aware, and seemingly intent on fusing Quatre's radius to his ulna.

"You shouldn't try to touch me when I'm sleeping," Heero said. "You could get hurt."

Quatre clutched his freshly-released arm to his chest. He was fairly sure he wasn't actually hurt, but the speed and ferocity of Heero's grip had made him nervous and he wanted to get the appendage as far away from striking distance as possible. "Yes, I see. I'm sorry."

"What did you want, anyway?" Heero asked.

"I wanted to know if you were all right. Trowa said you hadn't moved at all this morning and it worried me."

Heero pushed the blankets down to his waist and sat up. "I was tired. I felt cold, too. I suppose I was sleeping more soundly than usual." He pushed the blankets completely aside--mercifully, he was still wearing Trowa's boxers--and removed the bandages from his punctured thigh. The wound looked utterly insignificant now, just a small scab the size of a pinhead. There was no bruising, no redness. Quatre reached out to touch it. The skin around the wound was cool and smooth, uninflamed.

"Does it hurt?" he asked, pressing gently.

"No."

"Do you feel all right otherwise?"

"I feel..." Heero paused and held his hands in font of him, palm up. He stared at his fingers intently for a few moments, and when they didn't do anything out of the ordinary, he let them fall into his lap. "I don't know."

"Try, please." Quatre's heart was beating too hard. It wasn't like Heero to be hesitant with words.

"I know my body, Quatre. I've always known exactly what it needs and when and how to keep it in the best condition I could under the circumstances. My body and my mind are the only things I have, and now they're changing."

Quatre sat down near Heero's feet. It wasn't an entirely voluntary movement. The wild, fearful look in Heero's eyes was like nothing he had ever expected to see in one of the most self-controlled, self-contained human beings he had ever met, and it shook him. "Changing how?" he asked through lips gone suddenly cold.

Once again, Heero looked down at his hands. The ring finger of his left hand twitched once, twice, then it spasmed so that the fingertip nearly touched the palm while the other fingers remained relaxed. "Stop it," Heero said in a harsh whisper. His hands crumpled into fists. "Stop it."

"Heero? Who are you talking to?"

Heero had closed his eyes, and his face was a mask of intense concentration. Tiny beads of sweat had gathered on his brow, and he was breathing furiously through his nostrils, almost fighting for air. Quatre laid a hand carefully on one clenched fist. "Heero, please. You're scaring me. Do you need a doctor?"

Slowly, Heero's fist unclenched. Quatre tried to take his own hand away, but Heero grabbed it. Without opening his eyes, he laced his fingers with Quatre's. "I do need a doctor, Quatre," he said, and his calm voice was at odds with his tense, sweat-slicked face. "Not here, though. We need...discretion. Someplace safe. Isolated."

"Isolated? Do you think you're in some kind of danger?"

Heero opened his eyes. He raised his head and looked directly at Quatre. In a moment of disorientation, Quatre wondered if Heero had gotten into some sort of drug that dilated his pupils, or maybe the morning light wasn't as strong as he thought it had been. Heero's irises had always been dark, but they had always been distinctly blue. This was no longer so. It took a bit more staring before Quatre could make out greyish radial striations in his irises, which were now black.

"Quatre, I can see..._everything_."

* * *

It took Quatre a while to understand what Heero meant by "everything", and though it turned out to be a bit of an exaggeration, it was odd enough to make him very, very nervous.

As it turned out, Heero had spent half the previous night wondering why he couldn't turn the lights off. It didn't matter which switch he flipped or which rheostat he turned, the light level remained the same. Late at night, with all the lights off, he could still make out every speck of dust, every spider lurking in a secluded corner, every fingerprint on the surfaces of Trowa's relatively immaculate kitchen.

Quatre, of course, wanted to test it before he got down to panicking in earnest, so he dragged a reluctant Heero into the bedroom, pulled the blackout curtains, and shut off the lights. He felt about blindly on Trowa's nightstand till he found a paperback book. "What's this?"

"A book. You're holding it upside down."

Quatre turned it upright. "Can you read the title?"

"The author is Justine Roth. Never heard of her. The title is The Night Mare. That's two words, not 'nightmare'. The cover art is a chalk drawing of a horse. Or maybe a big dog."

That got a rather uneven laugh out of Quatre. "Trowa has a thing for weird horror novels. Okay, what's this?" he asked, holding up what felt like a wristwatch.

"Watch. Mechanical. Brown leather band, gold bezel, Roman numbers on the face. There's a little window showing the day of the week beside the three and another window under the twelve showing the phases of the moon. It's presently six fifty-seven on a Wednesday and the moon is about three-quarters full."

Quatre set the watch back down on the nightstand. It rattled a little; his hands were shaking. "Heero, I can't see a damned thing."

"Is it really that dark in here?" Heero asked.

"A cat would have a hard time navigating this room." Quatre pulled the curtains open, winced at the nickel-colored light from the sky, and then looked back at Heero. "Is that better?"

"Better than what?" Heero seemed to be genuinely puzzled.

"Can you see more or less than when the curtain was closed?"

"The same."

"Wow." Quatre sat down at the foot of the unmade bed. His mind was racing, rapidly flipping through different options, the possible consequences of each action, and the logistics of following through on each action, and calculating the probability of a satisfactory outcome. It was a little like being hooked into ZERO.

"I need a doctor."

"Yes, I know," Quatre said rather impatiently, "I'm thinking."

"Your sister is a doctor, isn't she?"

"Irea? Yes, she is." Quatre's crazily-fluctuating thoughts stopped abruptly and homed in on her. She worked in anatomical pathology at a hospital associated with the largest university in the L4 cluster. Quatre didn't keep up with the specifics of her job, but he knew that she was fairly senior and well-connected. If nothing else, she would be a good place to start. "Do you want me to take you to her?"

"I'm already packed."


	9. Chapter 9

Trowa took a long, sober look at Heero's eyes, and then, in the understatement of the decade, said, "I don't believe our doctor has the expertise to treat this."

"I'd like to take him to see my sister on L4," Quatre said. He was working on his fourth cup of coffee and was feeling a bit shaky. "If she can't come up with an explanation for this, she can find someone who can." Probably, he added mentally.

Trowa considered that for a moment before giving a reluctant nod of approval. "Are you okay with that, Heero?" Trowa asked.

"It was my idea."

"I see."

Quatre glanced at his watch. "I checked the flight schedules and there's a shuttle that leaves in three hours. We can touch down on L4 by eight o'clock or so local time."

"The sooner the better," Heero said. He had his bag at his feet and was already dressed, which made Quatre realize he was still wearing a robe that didn't belong to him and most likely had a serious case of bed head.

"I'll drive. That'll give you a bit more time," said Trowa, who was of the opinion that things like speed limits and stop signals only applied to other people.

Quatre looked at Heero, silently asking him if that was all right. Heero shrugged and sat down on the sofa to wait, lacing his twitching fingers together in his lap. From the tension in his shoulders and the way his mouth was set in a hard little line, it was pretty clear that he wanted to be gone yesterday, if not sooner.

"Thanks, I won't take long to get ready. Trowa, could you help me pack?" Quatre asked.

"Of course." Trowa slid a hand down Quatre's back and escorted him to the bedroom, where he closed the door firmly before leaning down for a kiss that made Quatre feel wobbly in the knees. It wasn't a simple good morning kiss, or a farewell kiss, or even a we-have-time-for-a-quickie kiss, it was a hungry, possessive kind of a kiss, a kiss that was meant to be remembered.

"Wow," Quatre gasped when they finally broke apart. "What was that for?"

Trowa gave him a rather sad smile and kissed him again, gently this time, on his eyelids and his forehead. "Quatre, I am so sorry about all this," he said.

"I don't know what you mean."

Trowa caressed Quatre's cheek with the back of his hand. "It could have been you. Whatever is happening to Heero, it could have been happening to you."

Ah, so that was it. Trowa could be oddly insecure sometimes, mostly when he thought he should have been around for some event or other in Quatre's life. It used to make Quatre angry when he did that because how in the world were either of them supposed to live as fully functional adults if Trowa felt he always had to hover in the background? But time had mellowed those feelings out to a species of mild pity, and Quatre slid his arms around Trowa's waist. "Trowa, I know you feel guilty about this-and so do I-but you know as well as I do that Heero would throw himself in harm's way long before I got anywhere near it. I was never in any real danger as long as he was around."

"I wasn't so sure, actually. Lately he's been so..."

"Unstable?"

Trowa rumbled out a dry chuckle. "That's one way to put it."

"Whatever happened to him hasn't changed who he is. Deep down, he is still Heero Yuy, and he would lay down his life to protect those he is loyal to. Luckily, that includes me." He kissed Trowa's lips lightly. "And you."

Trowa was silent, but Quatre could almost hear him thinking. He didn't interrupt.

"And he loves you," he said at last.

"I know. I love him, too."

Trowa gave him a long, odd look. "No, Quatre, he loves you like I love you."

Shocked, Quatre pushed himself away and took a step backward. "What?"

"I'm surprised you didn't know," Trowa said, allowing him his space.

"But-he's my friend!" Quatre spluttered. "How did you-?"

"I found out years ago, during the first war. He had self-destructed Wing and nearly killed himself, so I brought him back to the circus with Cathy-"

Quatre was familiar with the story. "He was in bad shape then. He couldn't possibly know what he was saying. He must have been delirious."

"Yes, he was. He called out for you in his sleep sometimes. I could ignore that but I couldn't ignore the fact that when he got better and was perfectly lucid, he told me he loved you."

"Oh." Quatre had to take a very deep breath before that sank in. He felt like the foundation of his world had shifted and he couldn't quite keep his mental balance; he wondered if he would stagger and fall if Trowa hadn't kept a hand on his arm to stabilize him. "I'm sorry, it's just that this is the last thing in the world I expected to hear from you."

"It's okay, I resigned myself to it years ago," Trowa said quietly, misunderstanding. He reached out and ran his hand up and down Quatre's spine. It did very little to reassure Quatre, though he appreciated the intent.

"Neither of you ever told me," Quatre said. He tried not to make it sound like the accusation it was. He felt a little hurt, betrayed, and above all, confused because Trowa was right-he should have known.

Trowa smiled his gentle, warm smile, the one he reserved for the times when they were alone and he was feeling particularly serene about the world around him and his place in it. Quatre normally loved that secret little smile, but now it just made him feel uneasy. "It was never an issue," Trowa said quietly. "You made your choice."

Quatre nodded and swallowed past a lump in his throat. "Yes, I made my choice," he said, leaning into Trowa's embrace.

The fact that he had never known that he had that choice in the first place remained unspoken.

* * *

The shuttle ride to L4 might have been very awkward indeed if Heero hadn't slept through most of it. As it was, he only roused himself twice; once to devour the inflight meal (and half of Quatre's since Quatre was too nervous to eat) and once to visit the toilets. The rest of the time he spent curled up under the scratchy shuttle blanket with his head against the thick porthole glass, snoring. His fingers twitched oddly in his lap.

Quatre himself was so far from the realm of sleep that he thought he might never sleep again. He filled his time by messaging his sister (who was thrilled that he was coming to visit, but disturbed by what had happened to Heero), the Maguanac (who took it in turns to tell him exactly what kind of a slacker he was and the wide variety of disasters that were certain to come if he didn't return to work immediately). Between them, he managed to keep sane and relatively cheerful.

When the shuttle landed at L4-0299's port, Heero went from sound asleep to wide awake with no transition in between. He sat up straight, pushed aside the blanket, and demanded, "What time is it?"

Quatre glanced at his watch. They were a little late. "It's nearly eight-thirty, locally. Why?"

"I was hoping we would be able to see your sister before she got too busy."

"She's a doctor. Between her patients and her students, she's always busy. Don't worry about it, Heero, she'll make time for you." He reached out to pat Heero's knee in a reassuring manner, but thought better of it. He clamped his hands between his own knees instead and wondered how long it would take before he stopped feeling strange around Heero and if Heero had noticed that he was feeling strange.

It was a pointless thing to wonder, though, since Heero noticed everything. "I'm not going to break, Quatre," he said. "You don't have to treat me any differently."

"I guess I'm a little nervous," Quatre said, glancing out the window. He watched the ground crew rolling the loading bridge toward the hatch of their shuttle and began to gather his things. A light touch on his arm stopped him cold, and he slowly turned to look at Heero.

Heero didn't do a lot of touching. When it was absolutely necessary for him to touch another human being in a non-aggressive fashion, though, he was extraordinarily careful about it, as if he was afraid of his own strength. This was a different kind of touch, though; it was the kind of touch that either sought to comfort or to elicit comfort, and judging by Heero's pallor and the wild, staring aspect of his eyes, he wanted the latter. "I'm nervous too," he said in a low voice.

Quatre didn't think, he just did what came naturally to him and twined his fingers though Heero's, and they sat there till the last passengers had left the loading bridge before they let go of each other at last.

* * *

Irea's office was on the third floor of the Baxter-Forqualt University Hospital, and Quatre had to show his ID to no fewer than three security stations before he and Heero were let into the administrative wing, where he was processed and grilled by a fourth official on his business, Heero's business, asked to submit a urine sample for drug testing, and then abruptly apologized to when it turned out that neither Heero nor Quatre were new students seeking security clearance.

"I just want to see Dr. Winner. She's my sister," Quatre explained patiently for the fourth time. He was beginning to think it would have been easier to simply break in.

"Down the hall, third room on your left," said the uniformed figure at the desk. He had the air of one who had been on the job for two weeks, perhaps three, and hadn't quite got the hang of things though he desperately wanted to seem like he had.

"Thank you," Quatre said rather coldly, and marched off in the indicated direction. Heero, hands in pockets and head down, trailed after him. If he, too, was annoyed by the overzealous security measures, he wasn't showing it.

The found the door to Irea's office was slightly ajar, but Quatre knocked on it rather than push it open.

"That had better be my favorite little brother," called an irritated female voice from within, "otherwise, you can take a hike. I'm busy."

"Er, is this a bad time?" Quatre asked.

The door flew open. A delighted-looking Irea pulled him into the tiny office and into a tight hug, which he gladly returned, laughing. His bad mood evaporated in a flash.

"Quatre, honey, let me look at you!" she said, holding him out at arms' length. "You look ghastly. Was the flight very long? Did you have a hard time finding the place? When was the last time you had a haircut?"

Irea had evidently been hitting the coffee a little too hard. "About four hours, no, and I don't remember," Quatre answered dutifully, trying not to flinch away from the hand smoothing his hair down. "You look fantastic. It's so good to see you!"

That earned him another hug, but it was briefer this time. Quatre had almost forgotten about Heero. "Irea, I'd like you to meet Heero Yuy."

Irea's smile went from uninhibitedly broad to professionally polite as she noticed Heero skulking by the door. She inclined her head in greeting, but did not offer her hand, which was fortunate since Heero intensely disliked shaking hands. "It's very nice to meet you, Heero."

Heero met her eyes briefly. "Likewise," he muttered before turning his gaze back to the floor.

Unfazed by his brusque manners, Irea took a battered green folder from her desk. "I was able to hunt down some old medical records from you, but the very latest things I can find date back to 196. Could you tell me the name of your doctor so I can get something more recent?"

"No. There isn't anything more recent."

"You haven't been to a doctor in the last twelve years?" Irea asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"You won't find any public records for me at all from the last twelve years," Heero said.

Quatre frowned at him, puzzled. "Why, Heero?"

Heero met his eyes with a smile as thin and as cold as a new moon. "I thought that you of all people would have guessed by now, Quatre. I didn't want Heero Yuy to exist anymore, so he didn't." The smile disappeared. "Until you brought me back."

Of course. Heero would have found it child's play to simply slip off the grid whenever he wanted to. The apparently aimless, rootless lifestyle had had a purpose after all. It's a lot easier to be nobody in particular if you were never tied down. Quatre began to wonder if he had done something terribly wrong by forcing Heero more or less out into the open. "Heero, I'm sorry, I didn't realize..."

"Don't sweat it. If I hadn't wanted you to contact me when you really needed to, I could have arranged that."

There was no doubt about that, of course, but Quatre had to wonder about Heero's motivations for letting him do so. He had, at first, been trying to appeal to Heero's curiosity, his sense of adventure, perhaps even his soldierly side, but in light of Trowa's revelation, there might have been something else. Something Quatre didn't feel entirely at ease with. Instead of dealing with it, he looked to his sister, who was watching them with an air of suspicion and concern.

"I'm sorry, Irea, this kind of talk isn't helping you."

"Which is your way of saying that it's none of my business," she said. Quatre could not refute that, but she shrugged it off with a forgiving smile. "That's okay, I'm just here to do a preliminary exam. Heero, you can fill me in on your medical history while we do that, okay? The exam rooms are just down the hall and to the right. You can take room 319. I'll catch up with you in a few minutes while you change."

Heero didn't move. "I want Quatre to be with me for the exam."

Neither of the Winner siblings spoke for a long moment. Irea recovered from her surprise first. "Would you be more comfortable with a male doctor?"

Heero shook his head. "I'm fine with you, but I want Quatre to be with me for the exam regardless of who performs it."

"Oh." Irea looked at Quatre, who shrugged helplessly. He had no idea what to say. "Well, I suppose that would be all right. Quatre?"

"Er, sure, I'll sit in," Quatre said, though he felt somewhat uncomfortable at the prospect. Then he smiled, remembering something from childhood. "As long as I get a lollipop, too."

Irea laughed. "I'm sure that could be arranged."

* * *

"This is wrong," Irea said, sliding her finger down the first page of the battered green folder containing Heero's medical records. "They've sent me the wrong one."

Heero, wearing a paper gown with as much dignity as he could, took the folder from her. He scanned a few pages and handed it back. "No, this is correct."

"It says here your eyes are blue. And distinguishing scars...have you had cosmetic surgery?"

"No, I haven't. Up until two days ago, my eyes were blue. The bullet scars on my arm and leg began fading earlier than that."

Irea frowned and turned to Quatre, who had been sitting quietly in a corner trying not to think about how naked Heero was under the paper gown. "Quatre?"

Quatre pulled himself together. "I didn't know about the scars, but I can vouch for the fact that his eyes changed color yesterday morning. Also, two days before that, he had a pretty deep puncture wound in his thigh, and it's gone now."

Irea pushed a strand of hair from her brow. It was a nervous gesture, one she rarely made. "Eye color just doesn't change spontaneously in adults. Have you taken any medication? Had an injury?"

"Possibly," Heero said.

"What do you mean, possibly?"

"About a week ago, I was injected with an unknown substance," Heero said. "I did what I could to minimize the effects, but I've been experiencing some strange symptoms since then."

"How in the world do you minimize the effects of an unknown substance?"

Quatre now knew why Heero had asked him to sit with him during this exam-he needed a reliable witness. "He basically put himself into a coma," he said to his sister. "Or went catatonic. I'm not sure what the difference is, but he was out for about twenty-four hours. He seemed fine when he woke up."

"And it never occurred to you to seek medical help before this?" Irea demanded.

"We were someplace we shouldn't have been, researching something that's been covered up for a number of years. I would really rather not answer too many questions about that right now," Heero said.

Irea looked at Quatre, who could only give her a weak smile in reply. "I'm sure he'll answer all your medical questions," he said, unsure if that was helpful at all.

"Fine," Irea said. She seemed irritated, and underneath that, Quatre thought he could detect a little fear in her body language. He couldn't blame her for it, either. "Heero, if you'd like to step on the scale..."

* * *

Ninety minutes later, Irea wrapped things up by drawing three vacutainers of Heero's blood, a procedure that Quatre found sickly fascinating. "This was just a preliminary exam, Heero, and I'd like you to see a couple of colleagues of mine to go into more detail. First of all, I'd like to make an appointment with the neurology department for some tests."

"What kind of tests?" Heero asked, peeling off the tape she had used to bandage his punctured arm and readjusting it to his own satisfaction.

"Nothing too uncomfortable. A CAT scan and an electroencephalogram for sure, and probably some evoked response tests to see how you react to sensory stimuli. Some people find those to be a little stressful," she added, giving him a concerned glance over the top of the fresh chart she had made for him.

"I can handle it," Heero said flatly.

"Of course," she said, as if she had known it all along. She shut the chart with a snap and stood up. "Well, Quatre and I will let you get dressed, and then why don't you two go home and get some rest? You look like you need it." She held out a set of keys she had fished out of her pocket.

Quatre almost choked on his cherry lollipop. "What? No, Irea, we can't invade your home, there are plenty of places-"

She dangled the keys in front of his nose. "Quatre, I am too busy to argue with you. I have plenty of room and my place is much more comfortable than any hotel. Besides, don't you want to catch up with your big sister who you haven't visited in ages?"

His will dissolved like a lump of sugar in a cup of hot coffee. "That's emotional blackmail and it's beneath you," he said petulantly, taking the keys.

She grinned and kissed his cheek. "Not if it gets me my way, it's not. Now shoo, I have sick people to attend to."

* * *

"She was afraid of me," Heero said.

They were in the garden behind Irea's house, which was a pleasantly overgrown space shaded by fruit trees and thickly hedged for privacy. Quatre, who was lounging in a glider and chewing on a sweet autumn apple, shook his head. "I don't think Irea knows the meaning of fear. I think she was more confused than anything."

"No, she was scared. I could practically smell it on her." Heero tossed his own apple core into a hydrangea bush. "She thinks I'm a freak."

Quatre closed his eyes. He felt too relaxed right now to get into an argument with Heero. "You're not a freak. You're...unusual, sure, but hardly a freak."

"I am a freak."

"Heero," Quatre sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, "I don't really want to have this argument right now."

"I'm not arguing," Heero said, pulling another apple, along with a good deal of the branch it was growing on, from Irea's apple tree. "Sorry," he said, looking at the mangled branch ruefully.

"It needs a little pruning anyway."

Heero sulked.

It was always a trial when Heero decided to sulk, because he didn't take his sulking lightly and the usual techniques for jollying someone out of a sulk simply didn't work on him. He had an industrial-strength, weapons-grade sulk. It was a sulk with stamina. It may have persisted for hours, days, even, if Irea hadn't chosen that moment to arrive home and find them in the back yard raiding her apple crop.

Quatre guiltily removed his feet from her glider and sat up straight, but he needn't have bothered; Irea wasn't paying any attention to him. She was looking at Heero, and he was looking right back at her.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, then he held up the apple he was holding. "I'm sorry about the tree."

"What tree?" she asked, puzzled, then she noticed the branch and shook her head. "Never mind that. Heero," she said, kneeling down on the grass next to him, "I thought you said you were going to be forthcoming with all of your medical details."

"I was," Heero said.

"Is there something you might have forgotten?"

"I don't forget things like that."

Irea finally got around to noticing Quatre, but that was only to try to shoo him away. "Maybe there was something you don't feel comfortable discussing in front of my brother?"

"I don't feel uncomfortable discussing anything in front of Quatre."

"No cancer? No heart disease?"

Heero looked at her with an expression of pure bewilderment. "I think I would remember that."

"Any congenital defects? Bone disease? Neurological damage?"

"I was complete and thorough when I gave you my medical history. I don't understand what you're driving at, Doctor."

She gave him a long, probing look. "All right," she said quietly, "I don't think you're lying to me. You don't seem to be the type. I'm just trying to figure out why, if you haven't had any major medical events in the last twelve years, that your bloodstream is full of nanotech."


End file.
